High Stakes Assessment

While a few standardized tests over a student’s school career can be helpful to make sure students are on track and teachers are educating their students, the United States education system has far too many standardized tests. The U.S should reduce the number of tests given to students each year. The current amount of testing stresses students and forces teachers to “teach to the test”. Standardized testing has not and will not improve the American school

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.

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,

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

When high stakes tests are used as a large part of a teacher’s performance evaluation it fails to show the bigger picture. Students come from diverse learning backgrounds and testing does not show the growth that the teacher helped the students to accomplish. High stakes testing forces teachers to focus only on subjects tested and spend many, many hours on teaching test-taking strategies. By narrowing the curriculum, testing does not allow students to focus on a deep understanding of material or develop critical thinking skills. There has also been a “trickle down” of curriculum into the lower grade levels to help prepare them for standardized testing.

Have you ever felt the pressure of high-stakes testing as a student, a teacher, an administrator or even as a parent? The goals of federal and state governments of high stakes testing are to improve schools. The government believes if there are negative consequences tied to standardized test performance then teachers and students will work harder which will increase test scores. The use of standardized testing dates back several decades but with the passing of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002, high stakes testing is mandated nationwide. The article, High Stakes Testing and Student Achievement: Updated Analyses with NAEP Data, is a follow-up study about the relationship of high-stakes testing accountability and student achievement.

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

We resolve that the government should revoke high-stakes and standardized tests. As the affirmative, we describe standardize testing as any form of a test that is universal for each student, where each student has to answer the same questions and complete the same test, and any test that schools give for the purpose of comparing the scores. We define a high-stakes test as any test that schools give for the purpose of evaluating a teacher, school board member or a student, or any test that the Federal Government issues to verify that students are going to efficient and effective schools.

As the number of English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. classrooms has grown, an analysis reveals many strengths and downfalls in regards to how assessment can best be used to support learning for this populations of students. This paper will take a brief look at current ELL policies, discuss No Child Left Behind (NCLB) assessment requirements for ELLs, provide information on assessment validity and value-added measures for ELL educators, and will address critical issues of how to properly assess and place ELLs. Just as with any other population or sub-group of students, ELLs have policies and procedures put into place to protect their rights to an education at both the

There are numerous definitions of what a high stakes test is. This is probably due to the fact that its application encompasses educators (teachers and learning institutions), schools, and students. Therefore, in this regard, it is understandable that its authoritative definition differs from one quarter to another. However, according to Wolinsky (2014), a common definition and understanding of high stakes tests refer to testing that has serious implications for the person taking the test. The Glossary of Education Reform (2014) offers another elucidation of what a high stakes test is, stating that it is any test used to arrive at important decisions concerning students, educators, and/or learning institutions. This is further affirmed by Johnson & Johnson (2009; Fair Test, 2014), who state that the decisions emanating from high stakes tests are often life-altering, and may include the denial of a diploma, the repetition of a school grade, and denial of funding or even school closure.

Bilingualism in regards to the curriculum, as many conceive, is not implemented solely for students that are lacking proficiency in English, and need to take English as a Second Language (ESL) course, these students are referred to as limited English proficiency (LEP) students. In other nations around the world multilingualism is normal and many students are exposed to three languages that are incorporated into their curriculum (Datta 2003,p.1). Many classrooms incorporate a second language along with English to enhance the lessons being taught with in the activity. There is such a great need for bilingual education as well as ESL classes. There are over 2.1 million public school students in the United States that are LEP students. Thirteen percent of schools that have LEP students enrolled do not offer any programs to help the students with their deficiencies. How can a student be expected to learn if they cannot understand what the teacher is saying? Fortunately the majority of schools that have LEP students do receive either ESL classes or Bilingual education. Among these schools that have programs, seventy-six percent provide ESL programs, and thirty-six percent have Bilingual education. There are only about one-third of public schools that offer both bilingual education and ESL programs (National Center for Educational

Today, schools are currently racing to get ahead, regarding high test scores as some kind of achievement even though results don’t always measure student learning as intended. The United States’ heavy reliance on multiple-choice exams exceeds that of most countries and contributes to wasted time, money, and a limited education for poor and minority students. Although change is beginning, a solution is far from tangible with legislation needing to catch up to public opinion. For now, students are suffering inordinate amounts of pressure to do well on state standardized tests and are putting up with an education lacking in areas that don’t pertain to such tests. However, with active particpation and protest of current federal education standards, one day students may be judged by more than the numerical values presented to them on their computer screens. In the end, one thing remains certain, the real problem is not with the students who take these tests or with the teachers who prepare them, the true issue lies in the way educators choose to use their results, often exceeding their

Popham & Madaus (1987) and Romberg, Williams, Zarrinnia (1989) defined testing as high stakes, because they influence both local and state administrators’ decisions about curriculum, appropriate programs, learners’ promotion (as cited in Herman, Dreyfus, Golan 1990). Pour-Mohammadi and Zainol Abidin (2012) noted that students’ ability is not the only criterion in their performance in tests.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for teachers and administrators to diminish the implementation of standardized tests under the justification that the anxiety-ridden students are constrained to agonize over exams, thus we as students must write our own Declaration of Assessments to bring to light the cruel and unwarranted application of regulated exams exercised by educational facilitators across the country, through doing so to see and recognize why we should and will take away standardized testing for the students.

High Stake Assessment are not the best choice to assess the students. There are many flaws to the process in which the students go through. I’m going to be talking about four of the problems with these kind of test. First, teachers spend so much time teaching to the tests that they don’t focus on the quality of what’s being taught. Also, teachers and school may focus all of the attention on helping students to reach the reach the minimum requirement while shortchanging others. Third, different criteria lead to different conclusions, students in school with almost no resources are not going to do as well as others. This leads to the last problem, the government only awards the high achieving schools, but not the low achieving schools. These are four of the problems with High Stake Assessments.