I must take exception to Samantha Sleasman’s letter to the editor in Monday’s Times Union regarding charter schools. Her assertion that standardized testing can be “demoralizing” to teachers and fails to “provide a fully enriched learning experience” is laughable at best, and derelict at its most potent. How often do we hear about these poor teachers’ plight… being coerced into teaching to the test by the unyielding gods of standards-based education? Too often.

I think it’s pretty simple. The tests are based on the curriculum. The teacher’s are supposed to teach the curriculum. So, if the teacher’s don’t want to “teach the test” then what on Earth do they want to teach? Teaching the test is their job.

This notion of a “fully enriched learning experience” is subjective, rhetorical nonsense. A teacher has whatever means their creativity can muster to stimulate that learning spark inside their students’ minds. I knew some teachers who truly had this gift, and when it was time for me to answer the test questions I was prepared. If Ms. Sleasman’s “enriched learning experience” doesn’t promote the students’ retention of the class material, then I would humbly suggest it is not as enriched as it needs to be.

However, I believe there is a more likely reason that standardized testing is scorned by some educators… accountability. Standardized testing not only allows for the measurement of a child’s education compared to their peers across the state… and across the nation, but it also allows for the accountability of school districts who are not being good stewards of the taxpayers’ money in their performance of their sole responsibility – the education of children. Teachers can then be held accountable for not performing to the standards required of them in their job descriptions and by the State of New York. It’d be much easier for a lousy teacher to fly under the radar if standards-based education was cast aside in favor of the more “progressive”, and academically unmeasurable, enriched learning experiences.

I know that most teachers have no picnic. I know that many parents (with their attorneys on speed-dial) do more harm than good by pressuring educators while ignoring their own children’s poor performance. I also know that charter schools, with their standards-based education, are a benefit, and a little healthy competition, whether between charter and public schools or between businesses, is better than a monopoly.