A Testing Place For Mortal Men Essay

Henry L. Roediger III believes that “testing as part of an educational routine provides an important tool not just to measure learning, but to promote it” (Roediger pg. 1). If we stop forcing students to shove information down

The practice of evaluating students and teachers based on expensive and stressful standardized testing has been the focus of educational reform for over a decade and has thus far proven to be ineffective (Ravitch 51).

Grant Wiggin’s article, “Why We Should Stop Bashing State Tests” offers an extensive look into state testing and how we need to teach a greater understanding, how it would improve test scores miraculously in addition to not threaten them in any way. Wiggin’s writes this article from a perspective that says he cares about what students need to learn not only to pass these tests, nevertheless also to present them the necessary skills in life to succeed. “Standardized tests can give us surprisingly valuable and counterintuitive insights into what students are not learning.” He communicates an understanding into the world of teachers being reviewed for even thinking of looking at the tests before

Getting an education is the main goal for everyone, although it is easy to obtain there are some obstacles to it. One of the main obstacles students face at the beginning of their education is standardized tests. Schools have started to adopt this type of tests as their main way to evaluate students’ intelligence and teachers’ effectiveness to educate the students. The way students used to learn has changed, in order to get them ready for the tests they have to spend much of the school time preparing for it instead of learning something they can use in their future life. According to Bruce Jacobs in No Child Left Behind's Emphasis on 'Teaching to the Test' Undermines Quality Teaching, a 2007 study by the University of Maryland teachers were put in much pressure and had thoughts to teach the test […]. This shows that teachers have also been affected by standardized tests in a way they have more pressure to make students pass. Having teachers ‘teach the test’ means their way to educate has been corrupted. In most cases when teachers’ ability to educate has been changed leads them to practice methods not convenient for scholars. One of these methods is memorization, in Relying on High-Stakes Standardized Tests to Evaluate Schools and Teachers: A Bad Idea by Hani Morgan describes how students start to adapt to an “inferior type of learning, based on memorization and recall students gain when teachers

Standardized tests take away from a teacher’s flexibility and creativity. With that in mind, teachers do not fit into the same mold either. Each teacher has their own style of teaching and should be given the flexibility to teach in a way that will inspire their students. Teachers are not able to be as creative in their teaching styles, when focused on test preparation. Many talented teachers leave the field of education when they lose the freedom to teach their own way. Teaching has gone from a creative art to a structured implementation as the focus shifts to standardized tests.

“…only twenty-two percent of those surveyed said increased testing had helped the performance of their local schools compared with twenty-eight in 2007” (“Public Skeptical of Standardized Testing.”). Furthermore the poll indicated an eleven percent increase, compared to last year, towards the favor of discontinuing the usage of students’ test results for teacher evaluations. William Bushaw, executive director of PDK International and co-director of PDK/Gallup Poll also stated, “Americans’ mistrust of standardized tests and their lack of confidence and understanding around new education standards is one the most surprising developments we’ve found in years” (“Public Skeptical of Standardized Testing.”). All in all, not only are these tests a concern for students, who are forced to sit through them, hoping to get a decent enough score to place into a class, receive their diploma, or even get accepted to the college of their dreams, but they are a concern for parents as well, who only want the best for their children and to see them succeed.

Standardized testing has become something of a norm under the No Child Left Behind Act. It has left the student and teacher responsible in having high test scores and has forced teachers to teach directly by the curriculum. What standardized testing does do is help develop memory, but at the cost of creativity (Emanuel 9-10). This is the problem behind standardized testing is that it has become linear and obsolete (Emanuel 9-10). It has been noticed by many for example Sir Ken Robinson said,” Testing in principal is a logical way of measuring student knowledge”, but he continues by saying that, “In practice it creates a very dry learning environment”. This shows that the No Child Left Behind Act and standardized testing is not working,

State-mandated standardized testing has lately become a monster to be feared by students from the beginning of their school career. According to well respected educational author Alfie Kohn, “[…] Most of today’s discourse about education has been reduced to a crude series of monosyllables: Test scores are too low. Make them go up” (Kohn 1). Why all the testing? Some is to meet the federal government requirements, some to meet state requirements, some for the district and some for the school, and still more tests are given simply to help students prepare for the ones already mentioned. So much testing has reduced time for instructors to actually teach. In addition, many of the tests neglect to cover all important material,

Many teachers these days are “teaching to the test” and hurting their students in the process. The students are not properly taught to retain information that will be helpful in the future. Many students are taught to memorize the information for the test and to never look back on that information until an exam, where the whole memorizing process starts again. The information is never fully learned or understood. “ students ... have very little idea how they can apply the information throughout their lives” (Source F). Many students cannot remember what they have learned up to the current week, and many researchers have found that since the information is not currently being used, it has been pushed to the back of the mind and in most cases, forgotten. Researchers have found that many students forget up to 60% of material that they learned in high school before moving to a university. The information that has been consumed by students is not being applied in real life situations. And the tests will not help students in the future with getting jobs or any real-world knowledge. “Instead of being able to explain what they can DO with the information they have learned (i.e., order food at a restaurant from language class, determine appropriate change while shopping from math class), students often only cite the technical

This idea of teaching to the test is a complete waste of educational time, that is spent preparing students for this extremely important test, that could be time going into learning things that will prepare students for college and life after college. The reason teachers do this is because they are under such pressure from the school districts to have good scores on these tests, due to the increase in funding to schools that do well and the lack in funding to schools that do poorly, that they can only find the time to prepare for these standardized tests instead of “teaching students skills that go beyond the tests”

“According to a review of testing research that has been conducted over the past century, over 90% of students have found that standardized tests have a positive effect on their achievement. Students feel better about their ability to comprehend and know subject materials that are presented on a standardized test. Even if a perfect score isn’t achieved, knowing where a student stands helps them be able to address learning deficits.”(12 Advantages and Disadvantages of Standardized Testing). This shows when students are pushed to their limits and they have been working hard in a certain subject they are prepared for test . Teachers in this situation are put to a test also (“Good teachers understand that test preparation drills and specific core instructions to “teach to a test “) . Teachers are put to the test by whether or not they can push students to their best ability to pass the exam. Students and teachers are given the same amount time to teach a specific subject and get judged off of it . This goes back to say all of the stress put on students and teachers is unacceptable because students and teachers should not be judged off of a test

First, a classroom must have a strong focus of balance. “Balance is so very important in a classroom, when having to deal with different ability levels you must be able to challenge the advanced students and adjust activities for the lower level students, there must be a balance!” (Madigan) The idea of balance is crucial to each student’s success rate. If teachers are able to successfully do this, testing shouldn’t be necessary and can be used a lot less frequently. There is a time for tests, just in moderation.

The argument Jessica Lahey produced were words directly from any readers mind while deciding how one would and should prove to any audience that tests are needed in all Colorado School Districts. The removal of tests from any school district is truly devastating to Colorado’s schooling system. The knowledge of summative testing and formative testing will be presented to the audience for a better understanding. Tests are the main reason why we can see student’s true competency levels in certain subject areas. Jessica’s argument was very logical in the eyes of someone who wants growth within our multiple school districts and our world. I will produce an analysis of her critically convincing argument as to why our students need to be tested to show our rankings, and too improve the overall schooling of America’s children. In ‘Students Should Be Tested More, Not Less’ Jessica Lahey provides an extremely convincing argument that supports the increase of testing within all school districts. In this argumentative analysis of Jessica Lahey’s argument I will bring forth key points from her piece that support our extreme need for testing, I will also show readers how we are totally failing our students and their brains true potential.

Ever since then standardized testing has been a huge part of education. Teachers across the nation had to teach to the curriculum instead of what they thought the students needed to learn. Nowadays colleges strictly look at ACT and SAT scores rather than classroom grades, because they believe that some teachers grade on a curve and are not giving the students a fair chance. Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance. A 2001 study published by the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-over-year tests core improvements were temporary and “caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning…”(“Standardized Tests”). Teachers are stressed over if they are teaching “correctly”. They went to a 4-year college, some even more, to get a degree in something that they wanted to do, either for themselves or for the children, and now they have to “teach to the test”. Tests can only measure a portion of the goals of education. A pschometrician, Daniel Koretz says, “standardized tests usually do not provide a direct and complete measure of educational achievement.”(Harris, Harris, and Smith).

Although testing has been around for a long time, I instinctively believe that testing doesn’t give a clear picture of student’s achievement. Thus, I make strong connection to the following quote: “A central question has been whether accountability policies and standardized testing helping or harming those children the polices are most often designed to serve” (Skrla, p.11). For instance, when I analyzed and interpreted the TAPR of Richard J Wilson Elementary school, I found valuable information that all teachers should know at the beginning of every school year. Specifically, when I examined the categories of testing and the students’ performance on individual TEKS. This practice would allow teachers to have a clear picture of what exact skills and content knowledge students are expected to achieve throughout the school year.