Thoughts on Statewide Standarized Testing

Mention statewide standardized testing among a group of educators and you'll immediately hear groans and grumbles.  Teachers are caught between a rock and a hard place in when it comes to standardized tests.  We know assessment is necessary to ensure students are learning and progressing, but we are skeptical about one test's ability to effectively track student understanding.  We look at our classes and see the individual abilities, knowledge, skills, and needs of thirty different kids and we think...how are we going to ensure each of these students does well on this one important test?  Anxiety builds throughout the year as we realize certain students are falling behind in reading, math, or science.  We reteach, scaffold, and tutor these students in order to help them succeed.  We do everything in our power to ensure all our students are prepared and then, when testing begins, we pray they perform to the best of their ability.  And then we wait to face judgement day.  Will our students' scores indicate we are effective teachers or will this be the year our administrators call us in to talk about an "improvement plan"? Frankly, this is a terrible way to measure teacher effectiveness and it causes a serious amount of anxiety for educators.  There is never going to be a standardized test that provides adequate (and comprehensive) evidence of student progress or teacher effectiveness because every student is unique.  So cue the groans and grumbles, because until we come up with a better system, educators and students will continue to be at the mercy of standardized tests.