In the world of education "achievement" is an important word.  Student achievement determines a school's success, even an educator's success.  Student achievement can determine certain types of funding and grant support.  It is also used to create a reputation for an individual school or system as a whole.  So what does achievement mean?  According to dictionary.com achievement means something accomplished, especially by superior ability, special effort, great courage, etc.; a great or heroic deed.  While that definition is descriptive and inspiring, unfortunately, education's definition means high scores on standardized tests.  An article in the Washington Post discusses this very topic.  Click here to read more. 

Students who spend the year learning how to converse in another language and expaning their knowledge of grammar, accent, syntax, inflection, and culture cannot possibly be measured by a standardized fill-in-the-bubble test.  Students who are surrounded by flowers, vegetables, trees, and grasses in a horticulture class cannot possibly display all of their newly acquired knowledge by taking a written test.  Students who spend the year learning to think creatively about their writing and who choose different forms of prose and poetry to express themselves cannot possibly display their progress on a narrow focused writing prompt that defines the standardized test for writing.  But do these students achieve?  Yes!  Do they learn?  Yes!  Do they progress?  Yes! 

The business world monitors achievement based on input and output figures.  How much time, energy, money is put in to a particular area of development and how much return does that produce both in the near future and distant future?  This type of evaluation allows for different types of measurements to be used and for different types of production to be deemed successful.  Perhaps the education world needs to take a cue from the business world on this one.  Measuing achievement isn't always about everyone producing the exact same results every time but about weighing the input versus the output, in other words, is what we are teaching making a difference on what students know and know how to do.