There is a fundamental distinction between being a "productive citizen" and being a school aged child. The distinction primarily exists in the fact that the child is the one who has to perform and who has no reasonable recourse or relief from either the method of instruction, the goal of the testing, the means of the testing or the labels that result from the instruction and testing. I heartily disagree that the world does not accomodate you--or rather, the world is so large and with so many niches that once an adult, you can accomodate yourself--place yourself in your child's shoes--tomorrow you get tested on everything you have ever been taught an must achieve a minimum score of 70---the test and the answers you put down are the sole testimony as to your lifes achievement--not your actual ability, not your work ethic, not your suitability for future benefit to society---not one practical application. "our society is geared toward visual input of information, why are we accommodating children when perhaps a greater service to them will be to teach them how to deal with a world that will NOT accommodate them?" Because they desrve it? Because they are the future and each child we lose to an arbitrary testing system whose purpose is to maintain federal funding is a stunning casualty. When I was in Afgh and Iraq, the most obvious of reasons as to why they were so screwed up was they automatically wrote of 50% of their population---you can't do that and succeed. You need to focus your limitted assets on teaching--not mass testing--because the fact is, regardless of how you score on the test--the educational system dumps you onto society anyway
might have gotten a little riled, my humble apologizees