The role of high-stakes testing in public schools has in many ways altered what we think about teaching and what we think about learning. When I think about high-stakes testing, I think about it as a classification system. It's a way for teachers and educators to classify those who have been successful on a discrete set of skills and those who are unsuccessful on those set of skills. What is not done with that information then is find ways to improve the learning outcomes of those who need the most support. But rather find ways that you can justify your teaching by ensuring that they become more successful on the tests that you deem to be the most important. The way that we use standardized testing at my school is we give students standardized tests starting in 3rd grade in the fall. We get the results in November. And then teachers at each grade level work together to identify the specific areas of need for their classroom so that they can teach to improve reading comprehension, so they can teach to improve match concepts, so they can teach to improve critical reasoning skills. Because each group in the classroom is different, and the role of a teacher is to take those students where they are and find ways to stretch and grow their minds so they improve their learning outcomes.