Pat Buoncristiani was a teacher and principal of a school in U.S. for many years. She now lives in her native Australia.
She raises important questions about how standardized testing, now ubiquitous, will affect creativity, curiosity, and critical thinking.
You will like her blog. She cares more about learning to think than learning to take tests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I went to the Thinking in the Deep End blog, as you suggested, and returned to your site resisting the urge to cry. As a recent arrival to the teaching field — as a creative writer/poet and journalist who did so at the ripe age of 48, that is — I am utterly distressed at the test-centric atmosphere of the urban high school where I teach Language Arts. The again, I feel like a giddy young rebel, as I recently decided to guide my students on a creative writing assignment with fewer parameters (read: no detailed rubric abiding strictly by the common core standards) than any of them are used to. It was initially confusing for some — as they are so used to being told which hoops to jump through and when — but ultimately liberating, for student and teacher alike.
I’ll take the damn disciplinary letter in my file if it need be. I suddenly feel teary eyed once again, thinking of one particular student (a high-functioning student who nonetheless has an IEP) who thanked me for setting his creativity free for the first time, he said, in his schooling. He is a senior in high school, by the way. Though I don’t deserve his praise, he now walks around telling people that I am the best teacher he has ever had. I don’t know if he will become a poet or the next Einstein, but I hope I ripped opened a door to that possibility.
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that is awesome
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