Student: Why we don’t care about Colorado’s standardized exams

That’s one suggestion for state lawmakers and school officials on how they can create buy-in from students on standardized tests. It comes from Fairview High School student Jessica Piper in Boulder. Piper was one of the hundreds of students who authored this letter to school officials and participated in a protest last fall against Colorado’s new science and social studies assessments for seniors.

In a new blog post, Piper attempts to explain why students don’t buy into the tests and what the state can do to fix that.

The notion that some student’s don’t try on state tests because they have no stake in the results rings true for many educators. While the results in Colorado mean little to individual students, the state does use data to determine the quality of schools and teachers. Critics say that’s not enough motivation for students to do their best and that adults may be held accountable not for how much a student knows but how much a student cares.

By comparison, test results mean everything for students in China. Check out this article from the New York Times Magazine on that nation’s test-prep factories.