selling tools we don't need

As a woodworker, I am constantly bombarded by tool catalogs in the mail and offers online that sell new "must have" tools that promise the capacity (if purchased) to make my woodworking life easier, more efficient and my wood shop more cluttered. My shop, in full production can get cluttered on its own pretty fast without he purchase of new tools, and each time I succumb to the acquisition of a new tool, there is a serial effect. Everything in my small shop must be moved to accommodate. So most tool catalogs and emails go immediately into recycling or the trashcan and only rarely is a new tool actually required.

Some new tools are useful and beautifully made and are the kinds of things you would treasure and then pass down to a grandchild. But other than a few basics that are intended to last years and years, most of my tool needs can be met by things I make myself and then throw away or recycle in the scrap bin when their time of usefulness is past.

Woodworking is not the only field to be bombarded by new tools that promise to be better and faster and to make better cuts. Education is like that. Just as I've learned in my own shop to make my own jigs and simple tools that keep me from spending exorbitant sums and from waiting for the UPS truck to arrive, educators have the capacity to do without the latest standardized tests if only they were trusted and trained to use their own innate abilities to measure their own success. Parents, too, have the means to measure their children's success in school. As parents are their children's first teachers, they also should be trusted and trained to make meaningful assessments of growth.

I can look at my iPhone to see if its raining, but did you know that looking out the window or stepping out the front door gives me a better and more immediate grasp of the weather outside?

And did you know that a teacher looking up from her desk across a classroom and seeing hands raised to answer questions gives that teacher the capacity to assess her students' level of interest in the material and potential for success? If you are a parent, seeing your child arrive home from school excited about something they have learned tells you about your child's school and his or her success within it. If your student goes to school with knots in the stomach and arrives home in a state of angst, you are being providing insight that standardized testing will only tell too late to make a difference in your child's life.

As a national policy for "school improvement," we've put all our eggs in a standardized testing basket forced downward through a system of rewards and punishments to near disastrous effects... further removing teachers and parents from their traditional roles in measuring,  observing, and monitoring growth. These standardized tests have been sold to the public by a profit making industry. When I see all the latest tool catalogs, I know that the inventors of the new tools may claim having my happy and successful woodworking in mind, but I know that they plan to profit greatly by their sale. We have given American education over to educational tool hucksters selling standardized tests and coaching programs to help students pass them and it has given us no joy in the educational workshop.

Make, fix and create...