Running head: AN EDUCATIONAL METAMORPHOSIS 1

An Educational Metamorphosis

Kayla R. Drew

Stockbridge High School

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An Educational Metamorphosis

An elementary class gathers on the green outside its classroom, its teacher standing in the middle

with a canvas container in her hands. She speaks clearly of metamorphosis, the process of a drastic

change from youth to maturity, and she articulates her points by gesturing to the small butterflies within

their cloth cage. For the previous month, they have been kept locked away as they grew softly from

caterpillars to molt into their chrysalises, hanging from the top like angels suspended from heaven, and

she lifts the lid--they fly. The children watch with wonder, crowding around the tiny spot to be the last

thing those butterflies see before they drift off to somewhere new.

To see the amazement of curiosity, one must simply observe a child piece together a puzzle for

the first time, solve a problem they had once fumbled at, strike the correct piano key, and that gleam in

their eyes--that is wonder. That is imagination. That is what learning should be about. Education through

their eyes, they hear everything, brush their fingertips against all surfaces to try to know and understand;

with this sound moment in mind, legislators and schools must acknowledge that standardized testing

needs drastic measures of reduction.

From pre-kindergarten to 12th grade, a student takes, on average, 112 mandated standardized

tests, according to a 2014 report from the Council of Great City Schools (Hart et al., 2014), not including

any school-developed testing. That makes it an average of eight tests a year, although certain numbers

shift around as some grades require more standardized tests than others. To meet those standards, the

government offers schools a fiscal incentive in a manner of telling them “good job, you’re on track,” but

they are not on track in the ways it matters.

All too much, schools put a heavy emphasis on ‘smarts’, but these are obtained through repetition

and memory, skills that everyone begins on a different level at. How is it fair to compare students who

struggle to remember the Pythagorean theorem to students who memorize hundreds of digits of pi? Does

it matter if a student has the tropes and schemes of Shakespeare’s ​Romeo and Juliet​ in their head?
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Knowing a little of everything does not make one person more valuable than another. Our strengths make

us ‘smart’, but our weaknesses make us human. Some people will struggle, despite all efforts to aid them,

and others will excel, but specialization develops geniuses. No one is perfect at everything.

The vast majority of teachers agree that, to teach an entire class well, all types of learning should

be employed. Some students learn better through sight-work; others, through listening or hands-on

projects. Teaching consists largely of experimentation on what works best, yet the existence of

standardized testing provide no room for trial and error. As common logic follows, these tests create time

constraints, so teachers must make sacrifices of their values for “more traditional methods for fear that

students would not learn enough to be successful in these high stakes tests” (Bulgar, 2012, p.2). They only

have one school year to get it right.

Standardized testing remains the mistake. Failure has a way of demolishing a student’s

confidence, and without the proper motivation, he or she might decide that education is not worth the

humiliation. In a Canadian study on the effects of standardized testing, it reported students often “​found

the whole experience of failing demeaning” (Kearns, 2011, p.8) and that “they experienced self-doubt

about their abilities as a direct result of their test failure”. If students believe the bar too high for them to

ever possibly reach, why would they continue trying? The testing teaches students that a test score is

everything that could matter in terms of their future, but it is not everything it takes to be a productive

member of society.

Teachers are incredible beings that demonstrate remarkable creativity and resilience. However, an

analysis of a cross-national survey from teachers asserts that when higher powers limit and appraise their

abilities, teachers become very unsatisfied with their occupation and do not take strong action in the

classroom (Smith & Kubacka, 2017, p.16). Teachers need motivation as they face a group of often

unfamiliar children and try to command some set of authority over them. To do this, they must express

respect, honesty, and compassion--important traits for passing down to the newest generations. However,
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with traditional methods, every moment in the classroom is dedicated to teaching material that has no

impact on a person’s character. Classrooms should teach inquiry; they should ignite curiosity. Education

should create the burning center of an individual that craves to understand all that interests them and peel

through the layers of persuasion to see the world for how it is.

The problem here lies mostly within the values of our government, whose detrimental standards

shape student minds to believe that testing matters most. While knowledge is power, power means

nothing put into the wrong person. Education must allow students to reach their top potential by teaching

them how to love learning. Standardized testing has little place in this as brilliance is rarely something

that can be measured by human hands. Instead, perhaps we should use those outstretched hands to focus

the distance it takes as education makes a metamorphosis, and when it flies so far we can no longer see it,

maybe we have found the right place.

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Reference List

Bulgar, S. (2012). The effects of high stakes testing on teachers in NJ. ​Journal on Educational

Psychology, 6​(1), 34-44.

Hart, R., Casserly, M., Uzzell, R., Palacios, M., Corcoran, A., & Spurgeon, L. (2014). ​Student

testing in America’s great city schools: An inventory and preliminary analysis​. Washington,

DC: Council of the Great City Schools.

Kearns, L. (2011). High-stakes standardized testing & marginalized youth: An examination of the

impact of those who fail. ​Canadian Journal of Education, 34​(2), 112-130.

Smith, W. C., & Kubacka, K. (2017). The emphasis of student test scores in teacher appraisal

systems. ​Education Policy Analysis Archives, 25, ​86.