Ragged, not uniform

What schools today are most concerned about is showing progress.  That's simple enough, and it should be good enough.  But, there is a slight problem with this approach.

An analogy to physical growth is a way to illustrate the problem.  When children are taken to the doctor's office.  They are weighed and measured for height.  It is recorded each time.  If one asks, (s)he can receive the percentile that that visit's weight and height represents.  On the next visit one can do the same.  If one were to ask at every visit, (s)he would have a picture of the growth of his or her child, both in individual growth and in comparison to every other child.  It changes each time, showing growth sometimes, and not showing growth at other times.  No one is upset about the growth or lack of growth because growth or lack thereof is genetically controlled.  When it is time, the body develops.  When it is not, the body waits.

It's pretty much that simple with the brain as it allows its owner to grow or not in its ability to comprehend.  It will happen at the cue of an individual's DNA.  Personality is also genetically controlled and also plays into when, how, and how much the brain learns.  One's personality and brain work hand-in-hand in producing what gets learned over the years from birth to adulthood.  So, how does a person measure the development of these two areas.  No one has really figured that out yet.  Giving a single test to measure the amount of information one can comprehend or compute really doesn't measure growth or development for either brain or personality.

I suppose the argument could be made that comprehending certain information at a given age does measure if the development of one's brain is in the same norm range as everyone else's development, but it is a weak argument.  First and foremost, developmental growth of children is ragged.  They don't all grow at the same rate nor at the same age intervals.  And that's a real problem for those wanting to measure progress of what children should know in academic subjects.  Second, there has never been an attempt to combine personality development with brain development.  For that matter, there aren't any tests developed to show the development of personality.  People are still busy defining personality or reducing it to a few traits if they have defined it.  Its influence on education is mainly disregarded.

Progress as measured by testing (or grading, for that matter) doesn't really show the same idea as weight and height for growth measurements at a doctor's office during childhood.  Once a person understands what showing progress means when it comes to learning, then serious reform can be made in showing growth and progress in this area.  Until then, people are calling testing (and grading) by a name that really doesn't measure much of anything.  One would never know it by the millions of dollars spent to produce, analyze, and perpetuate such a false notion to the public.