Are we preparing our students for the future?

Despite all the talk of 21st Century Standards and creating technologically savvy students, the assessments our students face each year do not actually mirror the presumed goals we have for these same students. I am all for bringing technology into the classroom, which helps me tremendously in structuring lessons that are differentiated so that all of my students can be successful in my ELA class regardless of their various learning styles, skill sets, and "ability levels." However, at the end of the day, I feel as though I am doing my students a disservice if I do not also ask them to participate in traditional learning activities--working independently, reading text and responding in traditional written form. This is because (as we are more aware of than ever given the time of year) it is my job not only to make sure my students are engaged, successful, and increasingly self-directed learners, but also, and often more importantly, able to perform well on the traditional state test at the end of each academic year.

The structure of this assessment goes completely against all the touted 21st Century Learning Standards mentioned in this week's reading. Students are not allowed to collaborate. They are not allowed to think imaginatively or creatively. They are not allowed to choose a form of response or expression that best highlights their particular strengths. In the past few weeks, my curriculum has changed completely from the typically diverse and engaging lessons I use for the greater part of the school year--lessons that foster group collaboration, inquiry and discovery, and allow students to discover and use their many individual strengths in order to be most successful with the material. Now we are entirely focused on preparing for the state test, which means lessons are increasingly independent. There is always a definite right answer and right way of doing things, and there is no room or time for individualized expression. And honestly, in the past few weeks, my students' practice test scores have gone up.

I do not understand how we as teachers can hope to provide an equitable curriculum for all of our students at all times if the assessment we are preparing them for is so drastically unfair and unrealistic at the end of the day. If our students will be expected to collaborate on projects in the 21st Century, why wouldn't they be expected to collaborate on their assessments? If our students will be able to and expected to use videos, websites, social networking, text messaging, and various other technologies to be successful in the 21st Century, why wouldn't they be expected to use such technologies on their assessments? This is why I feel there is currently a drastic rift between what we expect of our students, between the skill set we acknowledge our students will need to possess to be successful in their professional and personal lives, and those skills we assess each year on high-stakes tests. But until they change the ways in which students are assessed, we as teachers will be forced (at least for some part of the year) to teach to these tests as for reasons I will never understand, someone has determined that our success as educators should measured not in student engagement, not in our students ability to collaborate successfully while still thinking independently and creatively, not in our students use and application of 21st Century Standards, but in our students' abilities to fill in bubbles.