As educators, we moan and groan about high stakes tests, how those scores are taking over education, how our curriculum is being driven more and more by those strict parameters being tested on those yearly tests that are soon to be the basis of our paychecks. We whine that tests waste time we could be teaching.

But then, come the end of the semester, what do WE do?? Test more! We spend a couple of days 'reviewing', then we spend an hour and half session testing. For what purpose?? To see if they have learned what we taught? To reward the hard workers with yet another "A" on their report card? To punish the slackers with another "D" or "E"?

When they fail, do we backtrack and reteach? Do we remediate? Sometimes... But more often, we just march forward to whatever we were doing next anyway.

In reality, all we've done is wasted another several days of potential instruction in the name of semester exams.