Fighting the White Knight: Saving Education from Misguided Testing, Inappropriate Standards, and Other Good Intentions

In her final year of teaching, Jocelyn Turner spent over one-fifth of each week administering mandatory tests and quizzes. She spent the remaining time preparing students to take those specific exams, regardless of the background knowledge and preparedness of individual students. While she was testing, she could not teach. Teachers were expected to present the same Common Core-based, grade-specific material to all their students at the same time-- whether Jake was reading at a first-grade level or Taylor at a ninth-grade level. It was a rare and lucky child who fit the profile of the year's onslaught of tests.

Since No Child Left Behind, US schools have been burying students in tests and then drawing often misguided conclusions--when sometimes the only conclusion anyone ought to draw is that student X obviously spent hours staring at a set of questions he or she did not understand and maybe could not even read.

We have been told that US education is in crisis. Ms. Turner agrees. In Fighting the White Knight, she argues that government mandates created and are now perpetuating this crisis, depriving children of remedial learning, instruction time, and personal attention.

Fighting the White Knight also looks at the $1.6 trillion student debt crisis, a consequence of today's single-minded, college-bound pipeline; vocabulary deficits left to fester due to narrowly targeted curricula; and the sneaky gutting of elective, vocational/technical, and gifted education.

Ms. Turner concludes by advocating for changes she believes can rescue American education--guiding children back to the safe, inspirational learning experiences of a more student-focused time.