Grabbing Test

Education is a long-term investment. We, as students, work hard to acquire knowledge and to hone our skills so that we may use them one day. The effort we put into a single assignment should be considered as both for that specific assignment and for our rounding as complete, educated individuals. And with this mindset, students should be motivated even more to put more effort and hard work into academics, with the goal of bettering themselves for the future and advancing their prospects as individuals. And with this hard work and effort will come progress, and this progress should be reflected in the grading—not necessarily on individual assignments, but on the student’s education as a

Students are not taught important and necessary life skills when they are preparing for a test. They study the material so that they can be informed to regurgitate the material on paper for the purpose of passing a test. Test taking students are not encouraged to think outside the box because their answer might be incorrect.

One example demonstrating that grades lead to limited learning of material, can be illustrated by a study that was conducted of students, some of whom were graded. One group of students was told about being graded and the other group was not. The group who was “told they’d be graded on how well they learned a social studies lesson had more trouble understanding the main point of the text than did students who were told that no grades would be involved” (Kohn). This experiment shows how students concerned getting a good grade detracts from the students overall understanding. In my experience, students have so much homework, activities, and pressure to excel that it becomes challenging to learn topics outside of those being assigned. For example, in order to complete history worksheets, students do not always read the passages to find the answers, but rather skim the passage for keywords

The moment we open our laptops or unlock our phones to look for answers for a worksheet we were given, or read a brief chapter summary instead of reading the novel, we automatically minimize the amount of information we could gain from the assignment and block out our own ideas. We live in a generation where ‘googling’ a difficult question is more common than legitimately trying to find a solution. Of course it is easier to not do the work, but when we don’t do it, we miss out on so much material. As stated in Source A, “…Weaver said she felt strangely drawn into the plot overview and continued on.” This source explains a situation about a student in college who show her appreciation for John Steinbeck literature, which would not have occurred if she would have merely read Spark Notes. Connecting an emotional bond to the pieces of literature we are assigned to read is one of the most beautiful experiences in the world. Unfortunately, a large proportion student will ever know that feeling. Instead, they will know Cliff Notes and Spark Notes. They will know websites that leave out vital details that help construct a book into its unique form. Source E shows an accurate example of this, as it demonstrates a web page featuring Cliff Notes, with a header at the top reading “READ LESS.” Consequently, however, we don’t just read less. We learn less

They have found that the teachers only go over what they really want to go over and leave out a lot of the important details. “Gradually they end up going through the motions, staying ahead of their students in the textbooks, covering only material that will appear on the next text.”(pg.12) College professors want the students to know most of the material; or of at least heard of most of it before they get to college. “History professors in college routinely put down high school history courses. A colleague of mine calls his survey of American history “Iconoclasm I and II,” because he sees his job as disabusing his charges of what they learned in high school. In no other field does this happen. Mathematics professors, for instance, know that non-Euclidean geometry is rarely taught in high school, but they assume that Euclidean geometry was mistaught. Professors of english literature don’t presume that Romeo and Juliet was misunderstood in high school.”(pg.12)

-Roles are assigned to give them a part that challenges them, but they are able to complete.

All students do what they are told by teachers and administrators, such as completing assignments, reading textbooks, and study material, but they do it not because they enjoy the information they are “learning” about, but because they had to do it. Instead of learning to a mastery level, they master memorizing facts before they ask why they are doing it or how it is going to benefit them. Eve, one of the five students, admitted that she took a final exam and memorized most of the facts, then “emptied it out of [her] brain” (Pope 155). After the students take the test, they are required to move on to the next lesson to keep up with the class. All in all, the students were asked to collect facts that had nothing to do with their everyday lives, but to complete tasks efficiently without learning the material in depth.

Opponents of standardized tests claim that taking these tests are rewards for shallow thinking. Taking these tests can sometimes be a little challenging because not all students are good test takers. Some students when taking a test get overwhelmed and over think when reading the questions on the tests. According to Harris et al., “Studies of students of different ages have found a statistical association between students with high scores on standardized tests and relatively shallow thinking” (3). Generally overthinking on a test can lead students to choosing the wrong answer because they second guess their first answer choice. When teachers give kids test taking strategies one of the most common things said is to always go

The book Freakonomics about how there are some mysterious cases about students getting high scores in tests but then score less the next year they are put in a higher classroom. Then the immediate question that comes to mind is why did they score less? No one would think that the teachers would were the ones to blame. THEY cheated. That’s how the video and the book are similar, both talk about the teachers changing test scores to make the school look good. The book Freakonomics says, “ ...she might collect her students’ answer sheets and, in the hour or so before turning them in to be read by an electronic scanner, erase the wrong answers and fill in the correct ones.” The video as well shows that the teachers cheated changing test scores.

In this day and age, students have an exponentially increasing amount of information at their fingertips. They think critically about and question what others - including school

Unfortunately in modern time, students are more concerned to pass a test, than actually learning the material. It’s inconsiderate for schools to feel that throwing test after test will predict and showcase a student’s intelligence. “Most current U.S. standardized tests include only multiple-choice questions and provide no way for students to explain their thinking, says Swartz, of the National Center for Teaching Thinking. “So if a student answers (d) and that's correct, it still raises the question, ‘Is he

Tests that measure as little and as poorly as multiple-choice exams cannot provide meaningful accountability. Instead of being accountable to parents, community, teachers and students, schools become "accountable" to an unregulated testing industry. Students are not learning how to use the subjects in the real world, but for a

Have you ever been told by a teacher, “That’s the right answer but it’s wrong because that’s not how I showed you”. If you're like me, it happened all the time. The idea that every student is the same and has to do everything the same is ridiculous. Every student has a different style of learning and in many cases teachers ignore that fact.

School really should be all about the learning, but it has turned into a game. It is clear that something must be done to remedy this, so students can better their education and gain knowledge they wouldn’t otherwise. There are many possible ways to do this, but what is the best one? Perhaps by gaining a stronger sense of ethics and academic honesty, through limiting extra credit and unfair grade inflation, sticking to a universal syllabus, and ensuring that students understand class expectations, this can be better achieved. Only by implementing these can we determine the best way to help students

Another point is that the whole purpose of tests is to challenge what you know and what you have learned. If you don’t know it now, you won’t know it later. What will happen is when your future boss asks you to do something you’re going to sit there,embarrassed,because you don’t know how to do it. If you cheat on a test, you’re only proving what the person beside you knows. That is defeating the purpose of even learning.