Education through the Eyes of Mothers

DC Metro Moms spent yesterday blogging about education. I love reading this blog and was excited by the idea of them all focused on a topic so near and dear to my heart.

I think I posted comments on every single blog post from yesterday. And not for the reasons I had hoped. Again and again the posts were about parents struggling with the choice between public and private schools. I can understand that.
My issues with these various posts fell into two categories:

1. sadness for families because of their local schools
   
2. frustration with how public schools (and private) are judged

There are bad public schools; bad private ones too I'm sure. I sympathize with anyone whose neighborhood schools are not up to snuff.

However, many of these parents voiced frustration with the boring work students do in these schools, worksheet after worksheet. Then they also voiced disappointment with the test scores. My thinking is that those two things are closely linked. Schools begin to panic about test scores and resort to drilling students rather than teaching engaging, interesting lessons. Our focus, as a society, on test scores is resulting in mediocre teaching, at best.

There are a lot of ways to judge a school. I think that test scores is one of the least useful. The problem is, it is the easiest way.