system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I believe "we have to teach to the test" is a lame excuse used by bad teachers. CMV

With NCLB and a focus on test results, I've heard a consistent line from teachers: we can't teach as well because we have to teach to the test. Students aren't learning as much because we're limited in what we can teach.

I call bullshit.

If you are really learning the subject, the test should be very easy. If you're a good teacher, it's very easy to teach the subject in such a way that students learn the subject, and will then do well on the test.

I think NCLB and the emphasis on tests and accountability has made teachers very defensive, and they are hiding behind excuses instead of actually focusing on being better teachers. CMV.
gpt
You're missing the point of that phrase. 

The point of that phrase is that honestly, it's pretty easy to teach to a test. Let's take a look at the SAT. The Collegeboard recycles the same questions and the same question formats year after year. They test the same vocab, the same idioms, the same grammar rules. There's a certain curriculum for the math portion that one needs to know for the SAT. And it's pretty easy with a couple months of preparation to dramatically increase one's SAT score by solely focusing on test materials. But getting a high SAT score doesn't really indicate much except for the fact that you're good at taking the SAT. It doesn't make you better at researching sources and synthesizing them to write comprehensive papers. It doesn't make you better at interviewing and civics and in general, utilizing your academic knowledge within your life and your community.

When teachers are placed under crushing standardized testing guidelines, they have no choice but to teach the very limited curriculum that can be tested through standardized testing. If all these teachers are stuck only having enough time to teach the curriculum in standardized tests, the chance for much more comprehensive, multifaceted, and valuable projects and theses, service-learning, community work - this all decreases. There's just less time. And let's be honest. Test taking strategy is a huge part of how well one does on a test. And how does one improve that? By learning how to take a test and by taking more tests. Not a very valuable skill.

A major, major flaw with NCLB was that it did not reward improvement. Even if a teacher managed to get their students up by 3 reading levels within one year, if their students were not up to the place where they were supposed to be, the school's funding was cut. None of that highly impressive improvement was rewarded. 

So basically, teachers were put under a ton of pressure to meet the standards or else. And the best way to most efficiently meet those standards under time and money constraints is to teach to the test. Forget any projects. Forget anything creative. It's much easier to get good at a test by taking a lot of practice tests and learning only exactly what the test covers, which by the limitation of a standardized, most probably multiple-choice test is not very much at all.

And say a teacher decides to ignore all of that and not teach to the test. Under NCLB and our new emphasis on standardized testing, that teacher will be penalized in comparison to teachers who have their students focus on test-taking strategy and repetitive practice tests. An overemphasis on standardized testing completely distorts teacher's incentives on what to teach.