On October 15th, the Chairperson of the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission gave a TedX presentation on poverty and education. I agree with Dr. Tony Allen on many of the things he said in this speech. But in my opinion, this was a very harsh attack against the Colonial School District. Whether Tony Allen was correct or not about Colonial’s standardized test claims, he used the argument to validate a district’s capabilities on a very flawed system. Standardized tests are not a true indicator of any school’s standing as an educational institution. There are many measurements and indicators of how good or bad a school district is and standardized testing should never be used as a measure of success or failure. While I don’t disagree with Tony that education needs to change, especially in our current environment, using a flawed system is dangerous and further perpetuates the perception of what a failing school is.
The Season Of Myths 
If they gave the Standardized tests in urban slang, those schools would be high, and Wilmington Charter would be at the bottom. One simply cannot compare the two and say… these are good, these are bad… We didn’t expect Poles or Italians to understand WASPish vocabularies, but we were able to understand them enough to let them build America for us… Standardized tests only test what the test maker is trying to promote… Teachers on the other hand, can modify results based on whether content is learned … or not…
The big push needs to be TOWARDS the humanization of education, not the running away from it… Humans built the machines; not the other way around.
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