Should we un-standardize education?

Last Saturday an amazing thing happened: some high profile adults living in the city of Providence decided to check out exactly what was going on in their schools by taking the same standardize test the students had to. You can view a press release on Diane Ravitch's blog here. One important quote I would like to highlight, however:

60% scored at a level that would put them at risk of not graduating under Rhode Island’s new diploma system.

If a majority of well-educated adults would be at risk to not graduate a school system, there must be something wrong going on. Those who argue these tests require preparation are not off the hook either - if a test is being used to determine if someone can graduate (i.e. is fit to retain a job and enter society) then it should be passable by those who are currently in society. Instead, this test has failed both adults and kids.

At larger issue here, however, is what these standardized tests are really showing. Many people know and recognize that there are issues of socioeconomic status when kids take these tests. As studies have shown for years, students coming from low-income backgrounds perform poorly on tests when compared to their higher status neighbors. An article in today's Philadelphia inquirer might shed some light on this when it mentioned that our city has the highest per capita rate of poverty in the country's top ten populated cities. 

So perhaps we should have fewer standardized tests and trust our teachers more to do what we were hired to do: teach.