Unless you've dedicated your life to hiding under rocks in the wilderness (in which case you're probably teaching insects or small birds), chances are you've heard the phrase "teaching to the test" thrown about. The phrase refers to teachers and schools that design their curriculum to create students who are first and foremost champions of the standardized test.

Is doing so a good thing? Bad thing? How do the insects feel about it?

What follows is a tale of school curriculums and the U.S. leaders who loved them.

 

What did I say about always choosing C?

Come with us to a simpler time. A time when Myspace was cool and you couldn't imagine a world where Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson weren't together. The early 2000s also introduced us to some exciting education initiatives—'cause, you know, what education initiative isn't exciting?

In particular, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 was former President George W. Bush's response to receiving the ol' "neener-neener" from countries scoring much higher than America in reading, math, and science. So before we get left behind, let's take a peek at what it's all about.

The No Child Left Behind Act

At its heart, NCLB is an act designed to give all students a chance to succeed and keep teachers accountable for student learning. Sounds nice, right? It was created as a way to set high standards for students and establish measurable goals, and each state chose its own test and standards of learning.

But how to measure it all? The answer came in as a vision in black and white: annual standardized tests to measure Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Ta-da!

Let's get to the results. NCLB is noted for improving the accountability of schools and teachers. However, critics say that the emphasis on math and reading is taking away valuable learning from other subjects. Uh oh. So, surprise surprise, administering high stakes testing generated both benefits and drawbacks. Yes, both. Turns out problems arise when such huge consequences are placed on such a constrained indicator of learning. Who woulda thunk?

What does all that have to do with teaching to the test? A lot. With the pressure schools, teachers, and students are under to perform well on one standardized test (and there's plenty, should you choose to learn more), it's no wonder there tends to be classroom prep work dedicated to the test itself. This is where that "teaching-to-the-test" web gets a little stickier. It's the old "darned if you do, darned if you don't," catch 22 debacle.

And that ain't it.

On top of the high-stakes No Child Left Behind standardized test, the educational higher-ups have been pressuring public schools to raise math and reading scores across the board. President Obama introduced an initiative called Educate to Innovate, which encourages focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) classes and careers.

With all these pressures from the outside, lots of schools are thinking that desperate times call for desperate measures. Some districts, anxious about upping those scores, advocate teaching to the test (though they wont actually use those terms), while others hold firm in maintaining their own set curriculum.

Pros

Although "teaching to the test" might make some teachers hiss and vanish through an open window, there are several reasons to consider this approach. For example:

• It unifies district curriculum with federal expectations.
• Students transferring schools can expect objectives to remain constant throughout.
• It can reap higher scores on standardized tests. Isn't that what we all want, anyway?
• It measures skills that students are expected to learn.
• Students learn valuable test-taking skills. Some of them can even be applied to other tests.
• Learning progress and outcomes can be tracked over the years.
• It ensures accountability for teachers and students alike.

See? Totes legit. But it wouldn't be complete without the cons, too.

Cons

Get your picket sign ready. Some of the cons of teaching to the test can be pretty durn convincing.

• The approach could lead to inaccurate measurements of student and teacher skills. In other words, tests take samples of knowledge. If you teach to the test, the accuracy of those samples (and the knowledge that goes beyond the samples) will not exist.
• It creates stress for students and teachers, and can even lead to a deadly virus known as "testing flu."
• Introducing creative lessons is harder when teachers are restricted to narrow expectations.
• Critical thinking takes a back seat to learning the skills used to take multiple-choice tests.
• Testing bias will always exist, even if unintentionally.

There you have it. You can't deny the merit on either side, but most folks think it's not just a matter of teaching to the test or not—what's got to happen is slashing away at America's addiction to standardized tests in general.

And that'll take a lot more than filling in a few bubbles.