Chapter 1

The first chapter we read by Kylene Beers, “The Measure of Our Success” brought about points that I have never considered when it comes to teaching. As an English education minor I have not had to take any teaching classes so far at Olivet, this being my first, and so this is all a little different to me. However, I found myself agreeing much with what Beers had to say regarding education and what was considered “literate.”  I thought back to testing in school, I had always excelled in state testing, reading, writing, and history always my areas of strength, while only being considered “average” in other areas. My literacy rate had never been a problem for me, and while I was always aware of the less than average scores of the students in my class I never knew the steps that were being taken to “help” my classmates. Beers pointed out that schools are concerned with the state testing scores more than the individual, bribing students as they did in my high school to ensure high testing scores. The ability to raise test scores might look good on paper, but in the end does nothing to help the student’s understanding of the material or their ability to read it for that matter. I agree with Beers in many of the pints that she made, the importance lies with teaching students how to understand and use the information that they gain from school, not to only apply it to the mandated state testing. Another imperative point Beers made was closing the gap between poverty and students. I felt for Derek who did not have the supplies needed to succeed, each of setting off a chain reaction denying him something that was required to succeed in school. I believe that it should be the job of the state to make sure each child is given what they need to fruitfully accomplish school, whether that be running an extra bus route to get kids to school earlier to use the computers which might not be at home, or to seek teachers for extra help. Overall, I believe that Beers made some excellent points when it came to mandated state testing and provided some achievable recommendations for the schooling systems.