Daniel Marsula, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger image. Matthew Matera, an academic intern at the Post-Gazette when he attended North Allegheny High School, is in his fourth year of teaching and currently teaches at a charter middle school in the Boston area (matthew.matera@gmail.com).

BOSTON -- Like most K-12 teachers in America, I work in a world of standardized tests these days. I analyze state standards and study breakdowns of my students' test performance. I think about the expectations of the state as I plan lessons, and I spend time explicitly teaching test-taking strategies.

So, yes, I admit it. I teach to the test.

The more important question then becomes, is that a problem?

I don't think it is, but the issue is hardly uncontroversial.

Michael Winerip, the former New York Times education columnist, registered a typical complaint recently about the No Child Left Behind Act: "Because teachers' judgment and standards are supposedly not reliable, the law substitutes a battery of state tests that are supposed to tell the real truth about children's academic progress." Jonathan Kozol, a best-selling writer, sent a mass e-mail earlier this year calling on educators "to resist the testing mania."

The familiar argument goes that frustrated teachers, robbed of a chance to innovate and inspire by the pointless demands of almighty tests, now must teach rote drills to dead-eyed students who fantasize about the good old days of science labs and rousing discussions of Twelfth Night.

Looked at this way, testing seems dreadful, and as I began to teach I also decried the continual assessments that seemed bound to lead to such stultifying education conditions.

Testing is one of those rare topics, however, on which I have had a full-fledged conversion experience. Over time, I realized that tests evaluating students' ability to do math and read and write intelligently aren't necessarily the worst things in the world.

Rote teaching, after all, will not automatically help students do well on standardized tests any more than science labs and Shakespeare discussions will cause them to do poorly. Creative and inspiring teaching leads to strong test performance when done well, while schools whose students cannot identify the main idea of a passage or do fundamental math are not really providing an adequate education, no matter how flashy or engrossing their teachers' lessons might be.

If students cannot perform at the level necessary to succeed in society, then their teachers -- whether teaching by rote or with creativity and passion -- need to help them improve and, in turn, need the support necessary to do so.

My first year of teaching, at an urban middle school in St. Louis, reinforced this point of view. I learned some hard lessons that year.

First, and most humbling, I learned that no matter how hard I worked I was not yet a highly effective teacher. Second, I learned that all the passion and creativity I brought to my teaching was insufficient if many of my students continued to read far below grade level.

The state standardized tests showed that we were not educating our students well at my school. Despite the hard work that my colleagues and I put in every day, I couldn't help but agree. I don't think that anyone could have objectively observed my school -- or my class -- and concluded that we were anything close to a shining beacon of educational excellence.

My point is certainly not to dismiss teachers' own judgments and standards nor to condemn all teachers at schools that have low test scores -- my school had some fine teachers and many others (like me) who cared deeply but needed to get better. Nor is it to suggest that there aren't large, systemic problems that make our jobs much more difficult than necessary every single day.

My point is simply that the test results provided a pretty accurate portrait of the degree to which my students were not equipped to succeed.

I don't have an easy answer for the more difficult question of how to use test data once we have it, nor would I argue that all standardized tests are perfect. And I've almost completely avoided mentioning the No Child Left Behind Act, which is central to almost any discussion of standardized testing these days, because I think the arguments over the implementation the act and its testing requirements should be separated from the debate over whether or not we should even have standardized testing.

We must administer standardized tests so we can obtain hard data that allows us to identify and celebrate successful schools and to improve schools that do not adequately educate our nation's children.

When I teach to the test, I'm simply teaching my students how to be strong readers or writers -- exactly what I would have been teaching them anyway. If I'm doing an inadequate job and they score poorly, the solution is not for my administration to berate or fire me, or to cut arts funding or force me to teach nothing but rote curriculum. These and other misguided attempts at improving schools have to do with how people address the skill gaps exposed by test data, not with the data itself.

With all the serious problems facing American education today, it seems a waste of time and energy for people to fight over the simple concept of testing.

Let's argue and scuffle about the best ways to make sure that every student in America has excellent teachers and a positive, safe school atmosphere.

Let's investigate, experiment and debate about the best way to develop rich, engaging curriculum that teaches all students crucial academic skills.

Let's explore how to devise the best possible tests and how to implement them with the least possible disruption of regular instruction time.

Let's not waste time arguing about whether we should have standardized testing. We all need to know whether our children are learning to read, write and do math.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep teaching to the test -- while also teaching Shakespeare and other great literature -- to make sure that my students become strong writers and critical readers.