As an educator I find high stakes standardized testing to be offensive & counterproductive. Yet I find myself the director of these assessments in my building.
I went to hear Alfie Kohn speak when I taught in VA, and he made a comment that when student scores go up on standardized tests we should be worried & ask ourselves, what was the cost of that increase? I have seen first hand in many schools what this focus on standardized testing has done to our education system, and it's not good.