Standardized Testing

Should Saskatchewan adopt standardized testing?? This has become a rather large question, and there are a number of people pushing for it. This is a problem!!!!! As educators it should be our responsibility to STOP this before it gets any further.
Why??? I have good reason to believe this, I am not trying to just be difficult!!

First thing I guess I should say is that I am coming from a math background and thus I think primarily in terms of math.
What is standardized testing?? Prime examples of what this is are looking at the education system in Alberta and the United States (also known as the No Child Left Behind program). In both these places students are required to complete "standard" tests, which means they are all the same and every students must take it. In both these circumstances the main focuses of the test are math, reading, writing and science. However there has been numerous studies which are suggesting that these "standard" tests are not effective because they are multiple choice, which means that students are not able to show what they really know, and simply have to memorize facts to pass (they don't actually need to have an understanding). Then these results are published and schools inevitably become rated against one another, and the government (and firms supporting this - like those making the tests) argue that this is a good thing!! That ranking a school as 54th in the state is going to make those kids and teachers work harder to be number one. Well if you are living in a low socio-economic neighbor you might already be working as you can! So as you can see a large part of the problem is the focus on these numbers/stats with no contextual information.
As you can see this could become a problem for teachers in Saskatchewan if our province adopts standardized testing. Studies continually show that these tests do not benefit students, being ranked does not give them the boost to do better, but harms their morale, and most importantly these tests are NOT accurate measures of how students are achieving.
There are numerous other issues pertaining to standardized testing like, high-stakes testing, issues of accountability, teaching to the test, but I dont' want to blog about this any longer...it's been long enough!!