Evaluating Performance-Based Assessments

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).

After the implementation of the “No Child Left Behind Act” high risk standardized testing has become a pressure cooker of corruption in the United States due to often unrealistic expectations, abundant incentives, and harsh punishments placed upon educators and administrators, overall resulting in the essential need for reform. The concept that every student’s academic ability can be assessed by a single universal exam is a misguided notion.

The reliability of an assessment in a perfect situation should produce the same results if marked by another tutor or if that examiner unknowingly receives the same paper again. If different marks are given the assessment is consequently unreliable and proves that this assessment is subjective.

The Washington Post published the story “2015 Superintendent of the Year: High-stakes testing is the ‘fool’s gold’ of accountability” by Valerie Strauss on August 27 about one superintendent’s discontent with constant “high stakes testing”. Strauss was covering the story of man who was named the “2015 American Association of School Administrators National Superintendent of the Year”, Philip D. Lanoue who is the superintendent of the Clarke County School District in Georgia, which is one of the most impecunious districts in the state. Lanoue believes that the constant pattern of standardized testing in schools is completely different from what he refers to as actual “meaningful assessment” and considers the tests to be unbeneficial for students.

In the contemporary American education system high-stakes standardized testing has resulted in a focus on extensive test preparation, as well as a large increase in the numbers of teachers cheating by alternating their students' test scores. Both these phenomena are a direct consequence of the incentives and punishments directly linked to standardized test results.

All work handed in by the learner, they must sign and date and confirm that it is their own work.

Neil Tyson said, “When students cheat on exams, it’s because our School System values grades more than our Students value learning,” (Tyson, 2013) but who is to blame when teachers are caught cheating? The stress of performing well on standardized-testing is burdening. Performance, along with other factors, led to the Atlantic Public Schools cheating scandal, in which 44 schools altered their students’ scores and damaged their future academic success.

One of the most substantial and consequential reforms in education has been the nationwide adoption of standards-based accountability policies that use high-stakes standardized tests to evaluate the progress of students, the ability of teachers, and the effectiveness of schools {Dee:2011cl, Jacob:2005bm, Cohen:2009wl}. Since their inception in the late 1990s, high-stakes tests have been subject to much controversy. Researchers have uncovered various efforts by schools and districts to “game the system,” including discouraging low-performing students from taking the test {Heilig:2008hb}, targeting resources and attention to students near proficiency cutoffs {BooherJennings:2005bz, Neal:2010ut}, narrowing curricula to tested subjects {Au:2007ja, Koretz:2009ta}, even increasing students’ caloric intake on test days {Figlio:2005bp} and out-and-out cheating {Jacob:2003cd}. Moreover, teachers and administrators have criticized the policy, echoing concerns over a lack of resources, narrowed

In order for students to score higher, teachers edit the curriculum drastically, change teaching methods, and sometimes resort to dishonesty (5-8). According to a 1990 survey cited by Katie Young in her article, What’s So Bad About Standardized Testing?, nine percent of teachers admitted to cheating to raise test scores. Furthermore, many teachers unintentionally become angry and frustrated with low scoring students, resulting in a more hostile and uncomfortable learning environment. Both teachers and students feel discouraged and suddenly unmotivated after scoring poorly, which eventually affects the entire learning atmosphere (4-5). In How Standardized Testing Damages Education, an article by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, standardized testing is described as “developmentally inappropriate” (1). The overwhelming amount of pressure that accompanies standardized testing can severely affect students, administration, and the school system as a whole.

High stakes assessments are damaging our education system because all the important decisions are being made base in one assessment and not taking under consideration other evaluations. I would like to see a change in the way students, teachers and schools are being evaluated, I want to see a balance between the decisions that is affecting students. I want our schools to teach the curriculum and not a test. I don’t want students feel pressure and stop learning because of the fear of one

First, within the context of the video discussions, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) represents a top-heavy approach to education with the federal government mandating reform and placing emphasis on testing outcomes. Indeed, NCLB is part of the accountability movement that has led to the development of ongoing measures that are designed to create statewide assessment systems to measure student performance in mathematics and reading and thus address areas for improvement among students not performing at passable levels in such subject areas (Ravitch, 2014). This framework has extended into the Obama administration (i.e., Race to the Top – RTTT), with an even greater importance attached to outcomes, where high-stakes testing remains the basis by which student success is defined (Ravitch, 2014). Second, measuring student progress has historically been a prevalent feature of the American public education system with respect to policy and practice. However, the underlying assumption of present accountability systems is that attaching consequences to education reform will elevate student achievement (Hursh, 2010). Using high-stakes assessments to retain/promote students and to withhold a student’s graduation diploma for not passing an exit-level examination are examples of how the current NCLB/RTTT accountability framework supposedly ensures that high school

Have you ever stopped to wonder why students across the globe must forfeit valuable time in class to take nationally mandated tests? With these dreadful clouds that always seem to be blocking out the light of success, one might stop to wonder. Why? These well-known tests began in the early 1900s, when the S.A.T. made its debut. This test, the Scholastic Assessment Test, was originally used to help the government gauge how schools were handling their educational practices. In the 1940s the test began to hold weight in the academic community as colleges began requiring one’s score before admission. Then in the 1960s, the government began to try to provide more ways to properly grade school districts. For a time, these costly tests worked very well. But now in present day, as times have

The stress for high test scores has been put on teachers so heavily that teachers have started cheating, reporting false scores and or giving their students answers to the tests. “In the year 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia there were 11 teachers convicted of racketeering” (Armstrong), because they cheated on the standardized tests. These instructors were told that if their class failed to meet a certain requirement on the test they would be punished by having their pay decreased. If the teacher’s classes met or exceeded the requirement then the teachers would be given a raise as a reward for teaching the students the information on the test. The teachers are so worried about their salary that they are willing to cheat on a test. There can be reasonable doubt that the students they gave answers to truly retained or learned any of the information taught to

The argument has been made that so-called high stakes testing has caused district administrators, principals, and even teachers to focus more on teaching to the tests rather than providing instruction that is more well-rounded and perhaps more interesting to both educators and students (Au, 2011). However, regardless of how administrators, principals, and teachers may perceive standardized testing, the reliance on standardized test scores as a measure of school district effectiveness has resulted in educators attempting to find means to increase those scores that are deemed to be lower than acceptable (McNeil, Coppola, Radigan & Heilig,

1. Performance improvement- This is an indicator that the client is cognitively understanding what is required of them and improving a skill that may be difficult for them to achieve. Moreover, this is the time that a practitioner or health professional can become more observant. Being observant in this stage is very important. The client may have strained the first-time rehabilitation or therapy was given. However, through observation the client may not strain or appear to be in pain as much as they appeared to be in the beginning. During performance improvement practice is very important for the client to adhere to. They may be asked to perform in a way that is uncomfortable. This may encourage the client to become lazy and practice bad habits.