This is a hot topic. I’m not going to go down the rabbit hole of “should we” or “shouldn’t we”, but I do want to talk about what it is and what it isn’t. It IS an assessment of your social and economical status. It IS an assessment of your access to the world. How can we help our lower income and marginalized populations to gain access to the knowledge they need to be successful on these assessments? It will take a global initiative to right this wrong. Our low income communities need better access to digital resources, after school programs that enrich their children’s lives, community outreach programs to provide support to families that don’t know where to look or turn to for assistance. In the classroom, we can do our part by exposing our students to the world and increasing their knowledge in all areas. As much as I hate the “teach to the test” mentality, we DO have to teach our students HOW to navigate these assessments and do the best they can. We have to approach these tests differently: not as big, scary monsters, but as tools by which we can learn and grow. We are not spending enough time instructing our students in what these tests are truly asking and how we can effectively answer them.