I couldn't have said this better...

... so I won't try.

Here are the words of Yong Zhao explaining how standardized testing does not promote creative thinking.

Taken from the EdWeek on-line article, "Double Think:The Creativity-Testing Conflict" by Yong Zhao:

....Most important, as the education historian Diane Ravitch observed in The New York Review of Books earlier this year: "The central aim of Finnish education is the development of each child as a thinking, active, creative person, not the attainment of higher test scores, and the primary strategy of Finnish education is cooperation, not competition."

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For more on Yong Zhao's opinions about education, read Education Week blogger Catherine A. Cardno's interview with the author, "Zhao on Entrepreneurship, the Common Core, and Bacon."

The United States saw a decline of creativity over the past two decades, as a 2010 Newsweek article reported. Titled "The Creativity Crisis," the article cites research by Kyung Hee Kim, an educational psychology professor at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. Kim analyzed performance of adults and children on a commonly used creativity measure known as the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. The results indicate a creativity decrease in the last 20 years in all categories. This decline coincided with the movement toward more curriculum standardization and standardized testing in American schools exemplified by the No Child Left Behind Act. "NCLB has stifled any interest in developing individual differences, creative and innovative thinking, or individual potential," Kim said in an interview on the Encyclopaedia Britannica blog.

Standardized testing rewards the ability to find the "correct answer" and thus discourages creativity, which is about asking questions and challenging the status quo. A narrow and uniform curriculum deprives children of opportunities to explore and experiment with their interest and passion, which is the foundation of entrepreneurship. Constantly testing children and telling them they are not good enough depletes their confidence, which is the fuel of innovation. So, by any account, what policymakers have put in place in American schools is precisely what is needed to cancel out their desire for creative and entrepreneurial talents.

I don't know how policymakers can hold, simultaneously, these two ideas, creative entrepreneurship and test-driven curriculum standardization, that both research and common sense recognize as contradictory unless they change the slogans of 1984's Oceania, "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength" into "Standardization is Innovation, Uniformity is Creativity, and Testing is Enterprising" for education today.

Yong Zhao holds the presidential chair and is associate dean for global education in the college of education at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, and a professor in the department of educational measurement, policy, and leadership. He is the author ofCatching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization. His latest book, World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students, was published by Corwin Press in June.