This article has been popping up all over social media. Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems. I read this and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The author writes:

These test questions were just made up, and tragically, incomprehensibly, kids’ futures and the evaluations of their teachers will be based on their ability to guess the so-called correct answer to made up questions.

At what point do policy makers and test makers ask themselves, “what is this all for?” At what point to we admit we are testing for the sake of testing, fabricating questions that essentially test nothing at all?

In 2001 as I was working on my teacher certification I was arguing against our state assessment system, thinking that soon it would be replaced by a more authentic assessment. Here we are 16 years later and I am still arguing the same point. It would almost be amusing if it wasn’t so distressing.