High Stakes Testing In High Schools

According to education researcher Gregory J. Cizek, these tests are not helping the child. They’re hurting them. He knows that teacher need to show off what their students know, but he just doesn't understand why we have to do these tests. He can tell by his work that more than half of kids have an anxiety toward testing. The student may know a lot, but will freeze during the test. “Standardized testing can create a lot of stress for both educators and students. Excellent teachers quit the profession every day because of how much stress is on them. Students especially feel the pressure when there is something meaningful tied to them. In Oklahoma, high school students must pass four standardized tests in various areas, or they do not earn a diploma, even if their GPA was a 4.00. The stress this can cause on a teenager is not healthy in any way,” he states. His plan is to show people that this is a wrong thing to do and is unhealthy for both educators and the

High Stakes Testing has been overly integrated in the education systems. High-stakes testing are used to determine grade retention, school curriculum, and whether or not students will receive a high school diploma (Myers, 2015). Since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, high stakes testing has become the norm and mandating that students must pass a standardized test before moving up in grade. As a special education director, the focus is to ensure the student’s accommodations are being followed. Accommodations help increase students’ academic performance. “Both the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004 and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) call for students with disabilities to participate in the general education curriculum and in testing programs to the maximum extent possible for each student (Luke and Schwartz, 2010).” Throughout the years, high stakes testing is becoming more common than ever before. The reality is high stakes testing is one indicator in evaluating children with specific needs. This paper will discuss, the violation of the statutory language regarding assessment based on IDEA, the strategies and goals of a remediation, staff training, common Core and PARCC assessment, and funding for the remediation plan under IDEA.

“Persistent school segregation does not only mean that children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds attend different schools, but their schools are also unequal in their performance” (Logan, Minca, and Adar, 2012, p. 40). Although segregation is not done intentionally, the negative effects of this are seen in urban school districts. This is evident in high stakes test scores and the graduation rates when compared to their suburban peers. This paper will argue that the schools themselves, including teachers, are a piece of the puzzle that continues to spread inequality in our urban educational system.

High-stake tests are something that every student at some point has to take and they can very difficult for many students. The populations that this exam tends to effect are special education and English language learners. There is pressure on the teachers to get the students ready for them and pressure on the students to do well on them.

While America’s educational community is emerged in discussing the No Child Left Behind Act, high stakes testing, and what these new versions of old ideas actually mean for the larger society, the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) 2005 report shows that African-American males continue to spiral further down the achievement ladder. They are not thriving or surviving in many school settings. They have been flagged by Statistics as the highest rank among students who choose to leave school; are suspended, expelled, or kicked out of school. Unfortunately, the same is also true when it comes to poor test scores, low GPAs and high rates of referral and placement in special education. In stark contrast, African-American males are underrepresented in gifted education (NCES, 2005; Whiting, 2004; as cited in (Whiting, 2006, p. 222).

Cizek, Gregory J. "More Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing." Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice 20.4 (2005): 19-27. Google Scholar. Web. 8 Mar. 2017. This source explores the negative critiques of standardized testing from within the education profession. The history of high stakes tests is described to provide background information on how testing practices have evolved. Various consequences addressed include: reduction of instruction time, neglect of teaching material not covered by the tests, instruction and assessment mirroring the tests, and negative effects on teacher morale and creativity. Cizek also takes time to address the time commitment of test taking. While multiple hours spent on one test is necessary in

High stakes testing, also known as standardized testing, is designed to test students understanding of course content. There is much discussion as to whether high stakes is effective or a waste of time and money. High stakes testing should be eliminated because it isn't a valid measurement of student achievement and it hinders student's learning experiences and negatively affects teachers. Standardized testing doesn't efficiently measure student's achievement or understanding of the curriculum. Tests only measure students' knowledge of specific subjects and standards.

When a student has the ability to pursue classes that interest them, combined with teachers that enable the students to understand more and push themselves, the students will be more inclined to continue to go to school and find a topic that they are passionate about, that they would then hopefully be able to make a career out of. Students that are surrounded by negativity and a setting that distracts from the importance of learning and pressures the student is one that ultimately reduces the output of education that the politicians are so concerned with. Students can tell when they are being taught for a test. In NJ, all the way from the NJASK through PARCC testing through the SAT/ACT, it is obvious that there is an underlying issue in the education system. From 3rd Grade everything becomes a means to an end. What happens, though, if what a student is capable of and what they are good at is not on a test? Those students can be left behind or thought lesser of. Frustration sets in when a person becomes bored as well as when they are not properly understanding the material. Albert Einstein stated that “If you judge a fish based on how well it climbs a tree it will always feel stupid.” Standardized testing is good for creating a basis of knowledge and a starting point for the school system to make sure that each citizen can have a basic level of understanding, but there are many people that are not wired for standardized testing and traditional education. So many people have so many different skill sets, innate and developed. Those that can paint and have a vision like Picasso may not show this on their testing. This is the same as how those that are taking high level calculus and then the math section of the SAT. The questions are not the same. The thinking is meant to be misleading. This does not provide a fair

Standardized tests crush students and teachers under all the pressure they put on them. High stakes standardized tests put so much pressure

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.

Once they hit about third grade the standardized tests start to take over and creativity is suppressed to make room for all of the facts that children must memorize to pass the exams. There are negatives and positives about this. The 2004 New York State Education Department’s policy brief stated that the positive effects of high stakes exams were that they “provide students with clear info about their own skills, motivate students to work harder in school, send clearer messages to students about what to study and help students associate ad align personal efforts with rewards”. The negative effects were that high stakes exams “frustrate students and discourage them from trying, make students more competitive, and cause students to devalue grades and assessments”. These tests put a lot of pressure on the students as well as the teachers and they are so stressed out about making the scores that they need to keep their jobs and schools that other things like creativity and individualism are lost (New York State Education Department 9-12)

High-stakes testing. In today’s educational society, those words have the power to strike fear and doubt into teachers and students alike. High-stakes tests are exams used to determine important things about a school, district, teacher accountability and student performance. For a student, these tests have the power to determine whether or not she will advance to the next grade level and whether or not she graduates from high school. For a teacher, these tests often serve as evaluators of how well he teaches his students. Schools and school districts, who often run their establishments like businesses, use these high-stake tests to boost ratings, receive grades, and in many cases, request funding for things like transportation, based on how well the school as a whole did perform.

High stakes testing is basically one test that results have proven in the most recent years an enormous impact on education today. The outcome of these tests can have a major effect on students, teachers and schools. High stakes testing should not determine how smart a student is or how well a teacher can teach. These tests have been proven to have a negative impact on a student’s motivation to learn as well as a teacher’s motivation to teach. Not all students learn the same nor do they test the same. Therefore, a teacher’s performance should not be based on the results of these tests alone. High stakes testing put too much stress on students and teachers, have narrow curriculum and do not show diversity to ELL students.

Although high-stakes testing has been around for hundreds of years, we still use forms of this kind of testing in classrooms to this day. High-stakes testing is a very debated topic within the education field. Every few years at the state and federal level someone claims they have come up with a so-called new and improved way to perform standardized testing within schools, and the majority of the time the new ideas to improve high-stakes testing is created by politicians who do not have the first clue in what methods will help children learn more efficiently. I for one do not believe high-stakes testing truly measures the intelligence of a child.

Students are stressed. But, what is the goal of these tests? Are we trying to make students compete with one another to see who gets the higher score? Or are we preparing them for life outside of school? Maybe at one time these tests were used to measure how well the future leaders of our countries were learning, but now it is no longer like that. These tests seem to show no post-school value except to find the most successful kids and give them scholarships to college. Going along with this, everyone, depending on their grade, is required to take the same exact test. Despite their different ways of thinking, students are grouped together and the ones who are different are “wrong” simply because they were unable to learn it due to the way they were taught. Holding every single student to the same standards avoids the fact that everyone has a different mindset and each person may excel in different subjects. This poses a question: when will the system change? Students are held to such enormous pressure that when they meet the standards, they are convinced they’re stupid, and I struggle with this, too. However, it would be easier if all of the intimidation encountered when we are testing would just be withdrawn and students can be able to take a test, try their best, and if they don’t succeed, they can continue to work hard because, after all, a test shouldn’t determine how