High Stakes Testing And The Education System

Students with disabilities are increasingly being included in large scale, high-stakes testing programs despite inadequate accommodations. In recent years, the school system has increased pressure on students in regards to testing. In the past, Kentucky has done a poor job of including impaired students in its statewide assessments; mainly in failing to provide the mandated accommodations for disabled students. In order to help these students with their learning skills, test scores, appropriate testing accommodations and the performance of students with disabilities. Results indicate that most Kentucky students have been included in the CATS assessment, but many the scores obtained from disabled students may not be reliable due to

The Toms River High School East Child Stud Team (CST) would like to provide comments and concerns relating to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), No Child Left Behind, and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004 requirement of assessments in public schools and that all students must participate, with the sole focus on the state of New Jerseys decision to use the PARCC. Specifically, considering the impact is has on students classified with learning disabilities. I would like to urge you to think about reevaluating the procedure of using the PARCC and other standardized tests that are geared to general education students to assess our students because it seems to be doing more harm than good. During the

The course objective of this course, as outlined in the syllabus, is to provide historical, political and social context of the test and standards movements and their relation to assessment practices in Special Education. I chose this piece of evidence because I was able to critically analyze the role of standardized and non-standardized assessments within the school context, understanding alternative assessment requirements for students with disabilities and identify the relationship/correlation between testing practices and the disproportionality of students of color in Special Education. This piece of evidence illustrates my progress in this claim because it allowed me to analyze the article(s), support my analysis with evidence, as well as discuss the implications my understandings of the topic as it pertains to my views, roles and responsibilities as a teacher of Special

Personally, I see two major tripping blocks in Special Education in this article. First, why should a standardized test determine a student’s success in high school – especially a student with

Testing Our Schools was discussing the controversial topic of the newly introduced state testing that President Bush was trying to pass. President Bush was calling for higher standards in the academic world and wanted to hold schools and teachers accountable for the materials they are teaching students. This act would be known as “No Child Left Behind.” These standards where called “standards of learning” or SOLs. The documentary went to schools in Virginia to ask teacher how they felt about the standards that would be implanted in their schools. Many of the teachers seemed in favor because it gave them a guide on what to teach and how to teach the subjects. However, other teachers at schools in low income neighborhoods were opposed to the testing because students faced certain obstacles that would hinder true test score results. Many of America’s business sector was in favor of having this program in place because it made sure students were learning the information that would be needed later on in life. Although, these standardize test came with some glaring issues that made standards of learning a controversial topic among American society. Many people believed that the test were not an accurate indicator of a students true intelligence and the margin of error on these tests left many students being misclassified. The belief was, students were not actually learning the material but rather the main focus was to teach these students how to pass a test. These test sometimes

As a result of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) states are required to annually test students in 3rd through 8th grade to determine whether schools are making adequate yearly progress (AYP). Schools that fail to meet the standard are required to enter into improvement programs (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2012). The threat of a school being placed on an improvement program makes a high-stakes testing (HST) program like NCLB controversial because failure brings federal sanctions. The effort to avoid federal sanctions has resulted in states lowering the required passing scores for students and accusations of “teaching to the test” (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2012). Opponents of HST argue that “teaching to the test” has raised test scores without teaching the critical thinking skills that are most necessary in the real

“Pushing Back Against High Stakes for Students with Disabilities” is an article that focuses on the shortcomings of certain assessments such as the testing required by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) that is unfair for children with learning disabilities. The author brings to bear that unfair testing is frustrating for the children and has no value-add for their education. She continues by touting the fact that teachers cannot slow down and give extra time for topics that are difficult for the students but must move on due to the time constraints of the school year and policies of the school systems. The author calls for resistance to the mandated testing and demand a change to the system that is frustrating the education of children with learning disabilities but does not provide viable alternatives or methods to achieve them.

An exit examination is a test that students must pass to receive a diploma and graduate from high school in the United States. These are usually criterion­ referenced tests which were implemented as part of a comprehensive standards­ based education reform program which sets into place new standards intended to increase the learning of all students. When any test is directly tied to significant consequences, such as determining whether the student may receive a high school diploma, it is called a high­ stakes test. Many organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics oppose high­ stakes tests in general, with the NCTM saying that "placing too much emphasis on a single test or on testing can undermine the quality of education and jeopardize equality of

Despite of the policymakers’ efforts to implement strategies in order to evaluate and enhance special education effectiveness, the high stakes testing system has several negative consequences to students, as shown at Pazey et. al. study “The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Comparing Special Education Students’ Experiences of Accountability Reform Across Two Decades”. This qualitative case study interviewed 12 especial education students, half in 1995 and the other half 2012, after the introduction of the testing system and, later on, following two decades of implementation. According to this research, exceptional students felt marginalized when assigned to separated test preparation classes, when they failed the exams. In addition,

High stakes testing have been a part of public education in the United States since the passage of No Child Left Behind (2002), and more recently other countries like India are adopting similar high stakes test in the hopes to increase student learning and to be accountable to the larger public regarding the effectiveness of public education system. The paper utilizes the theories of John Hattie (2012) and visible learning outcomes to try and understand the effects of standardized testing in public schools from the perspectives of teachers. The research shall solely focus on public schools and the effects of standardized testing in curriculum and practice of day-to-day education. It shall use the various aspects of learning highlighted by Hattie (2012) in his work to discover how testing has affected education, especially in relation to children from lower income households. This research intends to uncover how teachers perceive standardized testing and how it impacts various groups of students. Through the interviews and focus groups with the teachers currently working in education, the hopes to find what teachers perceive are the most effective practices in the current model of testing. This cross case study will include one elementary school in Virginia and one in Andhra Pradesh. The analysis across the cases will showcases how teachers in two similar cases that shall differ on their perceptions of the influence of high stakes testing on students. The findings can help

There has been a lot of change in high stakes testing in the past few years. Most recently I administered the ACT Aspire. I can say that I do not know much about state mandated testing or the changes between the ACT Aspire and the past tests, such as PARCC or the Benchmark. In general, I do not agree that standardized tests should be so heavily weighed for students or teachers. According to Vacca and Vacca, there are various pros and cons of this type of testing. High stakes testing ensures that standards are met or can help schools identify areas of need. However, this testing also directs time and resources and can enable teachers to think of their students as test score “increasers” or “suppressors” rather than children. High stakes testing

In this article, the authors tried to explore how rural elementary school administrators observe the effect of high-stakes testing in comparison to suburban and urban elementary administrators in Florida. By this study, they focused on the impacts of high-stakes testing on administrators’ instructional leadership behaviours, job satisfactions and motivation & school climate.

Accommodations, as defined by the parentcenterhub.org, is a change that helps a student overcome or work around their disability. Testing accommodations refer to how a test is presented, the setting during administration, as well as a response format making the assessment more accessible to students with disabilities without changing what the test is measuring or level of difficulty of the test. An example of a testing accommodation being a student with a reading disability having the word problems to a math test administered orally. This accommodation allows the student access to the content but does not change what the test is measure, which is the students ability to do math computation. They still have to know how to do the operation in order to accurately answer the question. Another example of an appropriate testing accommodation is a student with a writing difficulty being allowed to dictate the answers to the test. The same expectations and questions are being asked of the student as typically developed peers. Additionally, by providing the student with this accommodation, the teacher can potentially gain a

Share your experiences with the administration of high stakes testing of your students, students in a classroom you observed, or your own children. What is the attitude of the students? Do you think this or other situational factors could have influenced scores? What was the role of teachers or administrators in these factors?

Students with a specific learning disability (or an IEP) are not exempt from state assessments; instead, these students are provided the appropriate accommodation to allow them to participate in the assessments (p.86-87). Fennell (2011) concluded this section of the chapter by recognizing that teachers are leery of state assessments (or formal assessments) because of the many negative outcomes of such testings. Thus, Fennell (2011) advocated that one single measurement cannot accurately provide a full picture of a student, so informal daily classroom assessments are extremely important (p.88).