Assessments Hold Schools, States and Nations Accountable Essay

Instead of giving children a quality education, “tests are used to make high stakes decisions about whether kids get promoted or graduate, or whether schools lose funding, or teachers lose their jobs, they narrow the focus of what teachers do in classrooms and limit the ability of schools to serve the broader needs of children and their communities” (Karp). The No Child Left Behind Act’s standardized test decides so many factors for teachers and students that it indirectly requires an ample amount of time to prepare for it, which hinders the time spent on giving students a real education. Teachers spend less time on giving students an education and more time on teaching them test-taking strategies in order to meet No Child Left Behind’s standards. The No Child Left Behind Act’s policies only rely “on an annual test, but single tests can be misleading. Every parent knows children have good and bad days” (Rothstein). The No Child Left Behind Act solely bases a school’s performance on a single, annual test. Test scores are not accurate if the results are not retested to ensure its legitimacy. Schools are labeled as a failing school and receive pay cuts for the performance on a single test per year if they are unable to meet proficiency standards. After the school receives punishment for failing to meet NCLB’s standards, it focuses more on the test than the education of its

Not only has the increased amount of testing placed enormous pressure on teachers to perform, but on students as well; the pressure to do well on these assessments is causes young students to suffer from anxiety and stress. Brookside Elementary School in Norwalk, Conn., was just one of the thousands of American public schools classified as failing during the 2010-2011 school year, according to their standardized test scores (Berger). In "Raising the Curve: A Year Inside One of America’s 45,000 Failing Public Schools”, Ron Berler, a journalist who has written for The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, documents the year he spent observing students and educators at Brookside as they struggled to meet the demands of No Child Left Behind. “The

Not only every student has to meet up to standards but teachers too must meet up to certain standards. With the NCLB initiative all teachers within the country should meet the highly qualified standards. Now the question is what kind of teachers does this highly qualified standard apply to? The answer is any elementary or secondary teacher who teaches a core academic subject. (Toolkit, 2003) The must haves for a qualified teacher are a bachelor’s degree, a full state certification, and demonstrated competency as defined by the state. Grants play a very intricate part in assisting teachers to become or stay highly qualified. NCLB provides funds to states and school districts to provide a wide variety of activities aimed at improving teacher quality. Annual report cards would be issued for states reporting if the teachers of met the qualifications. The report cards would be distributed to

“Unintended Educational and Social Consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act” Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, no. 2, Winter 2009, pp. 311. EBSCOhost. In this peer-reviewed academic journal article, Liz Hollingworth, an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Iowa, explores the history of school reform in the United States, and the unintended consequences of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Hollingworth states that the great promise of NCLB is that schools will focus on the education of low-achieving students, reducing the gap in student academic achievement between White students and African-American, Hispanic, and Native American student populations. Hollingworth states that an unintended consequence of NCLB was that teachers and school administrators had to shift curriculum focus in an effort to raise test scores, but in some cases, they had to also abandoned thoughtful, research-based classroom practices in exchange for test preparation. NCLB also affected teachers, highly qualified teachers left high-poverty schools, with low performance rates especially those schools where teacher salaries are tied to student academic performance. Hollingworth concludes her article by stating “we need to be wary of policy innovations that amount to simply rearranging the deck chairs on the

This alteration of the class curriculum results in a narrowing of the classroom focus to better take a specific test, but when the same material is tested in a different way, results show that information is not retained (“Why” 2). An 18-month study found that because of standardized tests, elementary school teachers had to give up on “reading real books, writing, and long term projects” because they had to spend more time reviewing material that was tested in the external assessments (Shepard 3). Barth and Mitchell insist that the overuse of standardized tests will distort the curriculum to only go over what is going to be tested (1), and the group Parents Across America support that claim because their children will miss out on important lessons like teamwork, being creative and learning to ask good questions (1). Barth and Mitchell clarify that teaching the format of the test with the purpose of preparing the student can be helpful, but only to the extent of a couple of weeks before the exam

The Bush administration, as well as others, hoped to close achievement gaps and bring all children up to a higher standard. In order to do this, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was enacted with the hope of an extreme education reform. It requires strict accountability and assessments for schools. This was done without proper funding and expectations that are difficult for schools and students to reach. This act caused many problems in schools rather than fixing the problems that already existed.

There is so much to consider when talking about assessments. There are all kinds of different types of assessments. There are assessments that happen on a daily basis in the classroom and then there are the tests that everyone knows about; the state mandated assessments, map test, and some know about DIBLES tests. These are the types of tests that parents, teachers, and administrators debate about. The debate is whether or not these test are doing students any good or harming them. It is good to have data on student and school’s progress, it keeps everyone accountable however, some believe that schools are testing too much. That all this time focused on testing is actually taking away from learning time. Each type of assessment has it’s own set of challenges.

The NCLB assessment practice has brought about some unforeseen consequences in the public education system — increased school dropout rates; student being give answered by teacher so a school can retain or expand their funding; and a big number of educators quitting the profession because schools are linking assessment scores to teacher evaluations (Amrein & Berliner, 2002, p. 2). Moreover, the NCLB concentrates solely on testing measures and as a result, schools are putting more weight on the state-funded instruction framework to expand student accomplishment for all students. Forcing teachers to focus solely on student's learning activities that prepare students for statewide examination, the impact of this has been many educators reporting

The American public educational system is filled with an assortment of problems. Most students are graduating with less knowledge and capability than similar students in other industrialized countries. Classroom disruptions are surprisingly common, and in some classrooms, nearly continuous. The public education system is having difficulty adjusting to the no child left behind act. The No Child Left Behind(NCLB) is a landmark in education reform designed to improve student achievement and change the culture of American’s schools.

With the NCLB’s focused emphasis on English and math standards, other educational areas such as the arts and sciences have been overlooked. The No Child Left Behind Act also focuses on bringing the lower scores up and not helping in raising the scores of those students who are already at higher levels leaving these higher achieving students behind in a push for equality. Although test scores have risen and the achievement gap between minority and white students has decreased, the No Child Left Behind Act has damaged the United States educational system by not addressing the needs of all students, forcing curricula to exclude arts, civics, foreign language and sciences, and emphasizing testing and not learning. It is time for a change.

According to the Nation’s Report Card, only forty percent of 4th graders and thirty-three percent of 8th graders are performing at or above levels of proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics test in 2015. These numbers are unchanged from 2013, showing that no progress is being made. The United States education system needs to drastically be reformed so that our test scores and work output is comparable to that of higher-achieving nations such as China and Japan. One policy currently in place that is making it difficult for teachers to teach the way they would like is the No Child Left behind Act. The act was originally made so that schools are held accountable for their students’ progress, parents get more choices of which school their children will attend and so that there is more flexibility for how funds can be distributed by the schools. The No Child Left Behind Act needs to be reformed because it encourages teachers to teach to the tests, gives money to schools already succeeding, and forces teachers to focus mainly on students struggling rather than average or excelling students.

There are pros and cons related to the four pillars on the act. Pros for assessment-driven reform are if the tests are carefully designed to be consistent with the kinds of learning desired in the classroom and if there is a tight connection between cognitive learning theory, the curriculum, classroom activities and assessment items (Educational Research, 2015). The con is standardized tests undervalue the sensitive interaction between teachers and their students in the complex, social system of the classroom (Educational Research, 2015). Another con is, by imposing standards on students’ minds we are, in effect, depriving them of their fundamental intellectual freedom by applying one standard set of knowledge. These tests oversimplify knowledge

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.

Information such as this still sparks several controversies around the country and various approaches to reverse this trend have been presented. One such approach is the No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB is widely regarded to as “a universal movement towards government-regulated standardization and high-stakes assessment.” (Rubin n.pag). The Act was intended to better the ranks of United States’ students through a leveled measurement of academic understanding, however after more than a decade; it is widely reported as having done more harm than good. One such report states,

The values of education have been promised to get better by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), but instead the values have dramatically decreased. Standardize testing was enabled to help each child receive a fair and just education (Guilfoyle 14). The NCLB was put in place to help each school be able to help the students. Instead, not every school is equal and not every child is receiving the best education the government can provide. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) stated how they believe “less emphasis on standardize assessments” would be more of an improvement (Guilfoyle 11). Education has become the prime way to be able to get anywhere in this world. Schools size can range from having 1,600 to 59 students in the schools. Each child should have the opportunity to have a great education, but only few are handed the education to allow them to succeed. Poor education options in the public schools are harming the students of a boundless education. The current use of testing is not helping students to better themselves in education, but harm their learning.