Curriculum Planning : Teaching Math, Education, And Social Studies Essay

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.

Improved Assessment Literacy: Unlike the current education system that treats assessment more separated from teaching, the core teaching standards recognize that teachers need to have greater knowledge and skill on how to develop a number of assessments, how to balance use of formative and summative assessment as

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

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 recently with the addition of the Common Core Standardized Tests, students are being faced with more tests than ever. A typical student takes 112 mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and 12th grade (Study says standardized...). In my opinion, the complexities of these tests are inclining to a degree where they are unreachable to the average student. These tests are an unreliable measure of performance with unfair instruction time. Student anxiety and stress has become so awful that the Standford-9 exam comes with instructions on what to do in case a student vomits on the test. While the tests are there for students skill-measurement scores, they aren’t the only one’s who need to prepare for the exam. Teachers are equally pressured by their overhead figures to insure student’s score well. Just like the students, standardized tests are an imprecise measure of teacher performance, yet they are used to reward and punish teachers. Teachers are being required to a more progressive teaching style with emphasize on reflective learning. The effects of this are being nicknamed “drill and kill” test prep. Developing a corresponding curriculum prior to these assessments can be tricky because of the ambiguous content the Common Core requires. A considerable majority of these tests are given to students online. These already pricey tests come at an expensive cost for schools. An underlining problem people are concerned about is declining student scores being used as an excuse to close public schools that already can’t afford for the computers to take the test, and open more voucher

Meanwhile, when students are excited about exploring a topic in depth, they are shut down because there is no time to learn, only time to memorize items that may be on the tests. Teachers on average spend more time on the memorization of specific words or questions that will be on the test, not the building exercises. Standardized tests are a waste of classroom time and does nothing besides hindering the learning process of students. Since teachers have to teach according to the test, they lose valuable teaching time and it narrows the

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).

When doing the interview with a school administrator, she explained to me that the school that she works in is very big on using the common core standards. She informed to me that teachers use this curriculum because Common Core standards let teachers know what students are expected to learn at every grade level. This is an outline for teachers to use and it is very effective. She mentioned to me that common core is great because after every math lesson there is an exit ticket that students must fill out. The exit ticket is a type of formative assessment that teacher check to see how well the students understood the concept. This is also given to students daily. The school administrator also mentioned to me during the interview that the school must give students the English Language Arts and Math State Test to students from the grades of 3rd to 5th grade. It was mentioned to me that the common core standards help the students prepare for the state test that the students take towards the end of the school of the year.

To lay it on a line, teachers should provide students the profitable knowledge they deserve which would be possible if standardized testing was out of the equation. Rather than taking up valuable class time to learn guessing techniques; those young minds should be enriched on

Students and educators today are pressured to prepare and conquer standardized testing, but are they truly teaching and learning valuable material when they are mostly talking about test-taking skills? I believe that instead of focusing on standardized testing, our schools should be focusing on developing the students in our education system to become the best students and citizens that they can be in the future by allowing those students to show every part of their education to college administrators and employers instead of just defining them by one number that they achieve on one day of their

Are teachers teaching students how to take standardized test or are teachers teaching students what they need to know in order to become successful? Although being and becoming successful are not the same concept, Standardized test main objective is to “meet each child at their starting point.” which means , it is created to measure each child's potential on a variety of subjects , and successfully bring them to a particular level, which each school district set because they think its the correct path to success. All through elementary school to high school , students are introduced to , two different kinds of standardized test . One of the tests are called the aptitude tests which predicts how well students are likely to perform on a particular task which

So what can be done about standardized testing? How can the burden be relieved from teachers and the stress removed from students? Possibilities are parents receiving written descriptions of their child’s work and performance. This can be something that the parents ask for as they please and can be a real asset in understanding the way their children really learn. That can include conferences with the teacher and maintaining a regular

This semester was very informative as far better understanding some important and major events that took place in the United States in regards to education. One of the subjects that really got me thinking was when we talked about how privatization is taking over democratic public education. I truly bothers me to think that we are starting to go into path where all that is valued is scores/standardized test results. I truly believe we teach to help children to help them not only learn basic skills but also to give them opportunities to be curious and want to explore different topics in different content areas. This also is essential to help them better understand what they want for their future as far as possible career. But when the focus are test

Currently, instructors are pressured by state education department to adjust school curricula to meet the expectations of the standardized test. Educators alter the curriculum to “match the [standardized] test” (“How Standardized”). Therefore, instructors are limited and classroom instruction is focused around test preparation for the annual standardized test. Teachers are forced to abandon their creative lessons and “teach the test,” or concentrating only on the material that will be evaluated (“How Standardized”). This frequently involves taking multiple choice tests that are formatted identically to the standardized test and only memorizing facts, formulas, and items included only on the standardized tests (“How Standardized”). Even though test scores may improve, students are not learning how to think critically and perform better in other subjects that are not on the test (“How Standardized”). Instructional time is limited in the other subject areas such as science, social studies, music, and art. Instructors feel “handicapped” and plead to state officials abandon these standardized tests for the sake of the “quality of the instruction in American schools” (Zimmerman 206). School curricula are being modified only to prepare students for a single test, not for education the students need in the future.