“As a nation, we need more college graduates in order to stay competitive in the global economy,” Duncan said. “But if the costs keep on rising, especially at a time when family incomes are hurting, college will become increasingly unaffordable for the middle class.”

Indeed, as tuition costs continue to rise and the national student loan debt hits $1 trillion, some people have been left wondering if college is even worth it anymore.

The increasing prices aren’t just due to the rising cost of tuition, but also thanks to higher fees for room and board. In-state students at public four-year colleges paid more for housing and food last year than tuition, although both increased substantially.

The costs have also gone up 24 percent at community colleges and 13 percent at private universities.

The price of attending a public four-year college has risen 27 percent beyond inflation over the past five years,

wo-thirds of students who earn four-year bachelor’s degrees are graduating with an average student loan debt of more than $25,000, and 1 in 10 borrowers now owe more than $54,000 in loans.

Furthermore, the escalation of college costs has resulted in many students and families barely scraping by, having to turn down admissions to their top-choice schools they couldn’t afford, or delaying college altogether. Worse still, some students leave school with debt and no degree.

student debt in America now exceeds $1 trillion.

40 percent: The share of households headed by someone under 35 that owed college debt in 2010.

$1.3 trillion: The amount of outstanding student loan debt, which first exceeded $1 trillion in March 2012.

."We need to recognize that the most serious domestic problem in the United States today is the widening gap between the children of the rich and the children of the poor," Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard, said last year when announcing that Harvard would give full scholarships to all its lowest-income students. "And education is the most powerful weapon we have to address that problem."

He became a college dropout, though nongraduate may be the more precise term.

"I enjoyed working hard, getting the job done, getting a paycheck," Mr. Blevins recalled. "I just knew I didn't want to quit." Advertisement Continue reading the main story So he quit college instead

Maybe he would take a break from college and keep working.

Students will be offered multiple opportunities to take the Keystones throughout their high school careers.

The Keystone Exams areend-of-course assessments designed to evaluate proficiency in academic content.

This can also lead to better teaching skills, as teachers will be held accountable to help their students meet these standards.

The key to good standardized testing is to test twice a year, both spring and fall, to prepare children and to communicate to them that this is just one vehicle to help assess their achievement.

The multiple-choice format used on standardized tests is an inadequate assessment tool.

Excessive testing may teach children to be good at taking tests, but does not prepare them for productive adult lives.

Open-ended questions on standardized tests are often graded by under-paid temporary workers with no educational training. Scorers make $11-$13 per hour and need only a bachelor’s degree, not necessarily related to education. As one former test scorer stated, "all it takes to become a test scorer is a bachelor’s degree, a lack of a steady job, and a willingness to throw independent thinking out the window…” [97]

Most parents approve of standardized tests.

And in the end, he noted, colleges are not asking a student’s PSSA score

In the period from 2009 to 2012, Pennsylvania spent more than $32 million per year testing just under one million students in grades 3 through 9.

Standardized tests can be one part of a comprehensive assessment system. However, they offer just a small piece of the picture. Better methods of evaluating student needs and progress already exist. Careful observation and documentation of student work and behaviors by trained teachers is more helpful than a one-time test. Assessment based on student performance on real learning tasks is more useful and accurate for measuring achievement -- and provides more information for teaching -- than multiple-choice achievement tests.

teaching to the test

But nearly one in three blacks said using standardized tests to compare their local schools with schools in other districts and other states is “very important.” Just 15 percent of whites gave the same response.

A majority also said they think test scores are “somewhat important” in judging the effectiveness of their local schools.

Many Americans also said they think students should be judged by multiple measures, including student work, written teacher observations and grades. And they overwhelmingly think teacher quality is the best way to improve education, followed by high academic standards and effective principals.

“I feel that standardized testing isn’t really useful for students. In my opinion, students take hard tests but, in the future, we won’t remember any of it.”

“I believe that tests are not the best way of going about seeing how smart a student is. Many students tend to freeze up on tests even when they know their work.”

Teenagers say some of the most profound, and most entertaining, things you could ever imagine. A day doesn’t go by that my students don’t enlighten me with their genuine innocence or entertain me with their youthful ignorance.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

I am not cruel, only truthful

In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come; And take thy way where yet thou art not known,

Thy blemishes amend, if so I could: I wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.

Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view,

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain,