High Stakes Testing Research Paper

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.

Mandate High stakes exams are test that analyze students achievements scores with other students from across the United States. Theses scores are extremely important because it had negative and positive effects on the students, teachers, school and the governemnt. The students are required to score at a certain grade level. If the did not get that score they are likely to not graduate. Teachers have the pressure to prepare the students for the exam. If the students don’t score high, then it relflects how effectieve the teacher has taught. The teacher can get fired if they don’t have their students score higher. Schools get affected also in these exams because if the students score high then the school

standardized tests is that they lack a level of comprehension and are incapable of succeeding in the educational system. This belief is especially prevalent in regards to high stakes tests such as college entrance and high school graduation exams because the focus is on the test score. The perception is that these scores are the sole indicator of the student’s knowledge of a subject and their ability to succeed at a higher level of education. Therefore,

These tests will provide teachers and administrators a diagnosis of how the school is performing and in which areas the school needs to improve on. This will also inform policymakers which schools are doing well and why. Then that technique can be applied to schools in which the scores were not meeting standards. President Bush and the U.S. Congress have challenged educators to set high standards and hold students, schools and districts accountable for results. (Dept. of Ed, 2004)

High stakes testing is a topic in which both Republicans and Democrats are against having and agree it should be taken out of the Education standards. Children spend more than 2 percent of classroom instruction time taking test and with this new move to limit school testing the goal is

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.

If someone asked you “how do you define student achievement?”, what would your answer be? Would you say student achievement is best measured by state assessments? Or would you say that student achievement is too complex a subject to be objectively measured? From a National Education Association survey in 2015, seventy percent out of 1500 members do not believe state assessments are developmentally appropriate for students (nea Today). State assessments, most commonly known as standardized testing, have the same questions, same answers, and have to be done within the same amount of time by all students. Standardized testing ranges from driving tests to the SATs. In our society, standardized testing is important because they are designed to

High stake test means that the results test can have major consequence for a student (Armstrong, Henson, & Savage, 2015). This is part of the reason the ESSA wants to change standardized testing. The ESSA wants to change standardized testing because high stakes testing is nerve racking for student and for teachers. The ESSA has proposed that schools should break these high stakes test, into parts that will be taken throughout the year. At the end of the year the separate test scores will be added up and averaged. Whatever the average score will then turn into their final score. Another one of the changes that the ESSA wants to put into place is to put a limit on the amount of alternative assessments that are given to students with disabilities (Strauss 2016). The ESSA states that they will “cap at 1 percent the proportion of students in a state who can be administered an alternative assessment for students with the most sever cognitive disabilities” (Strauss 2016). The ESSA, however will be lineate in the amount of students that need an alternative assessment as long as the state seeks a wavier to expand the amount of students that can take alternative assessments (Strauss

Education keeps evolving through time. However, it has been stagnant lately. We are in the period where high-stakes tests are one of the largest aspects in education. It has been like that for a few decades now. A large group of people seem to think that this is the perfect time for change. There are a lot of arguments going around opposing the implementation of high-stakes testing and vice versa. While doing the synthesis paper and proposal, I have noticed that most sources tend to talk about the collateral damage of high-stakes testing instead of its perks. As a result, I decided to interview an admissions officer, because I needed to hear from someone that should support the use of high-stakes testing. I needed to be able to understand both

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 used to determine whether the students are being taught well by the teacher. This test is important because it will decide if the students has met all the demands required to graduate school. High-Stakes Testing will make education better because this test will be a good way to view all the scores from the students and seeing which students are in need to academically improve more and the students that does not need improvements at all. This test will give them an idea of how many efforts they should put into to help the students obtain their education. According to Jay P. Greene, Margaret Raymond and Eric Hanushek of Stanford University have demonstrated that states with high-stakes tests made better test improvements.

There are many different types of standardized tests used in schools around the country, but “high-stakes” achievement tests in US elementary and secondary schools have produced

High Stake Testing- According to our textbook, high stake testing involves all students including those with disabilities participating in a standardized summative common assessment, which is mandated by the federal government. (Salend, 2016, pg 454) These assessments are used to measure mastery of benchmarks in the curriculum. (Salend, 2016, pg 454) These assessments are used and analyzed in order to make important decisions. The results of high stake testing can be used to make decisions about a student’s education program and promotion. They often are used to measure teaching effectiveness. The use of high stake testing is highly controversial. Many argue these tests are not an accurate depiction of a student’s abilities. Not every student is a good test taker, and other means of assessments could be used to measure student’s skills and abilities. It may also cause pressure on students as well as cause testing anxiety and lack of motivation in some students. (Salend, 2016, pg 455) Other consequences of high stake testing is that is puts too much reliance on a test to measure teacher effectiveness. It also puts a lot of pressure on teachers since they are often evaluated based on the results of students performance on the test. This may lead to teacher’s teaching to the test and may limit their creativity and time spent on other content outside of the test. There are alternative testing assessments and testing accommodations available for students with disabilities.

Form of student or school assessment and how it impacts introduction of innovative educational practices and development of innovation skills in education system continue to elicit a lot of debate. Looney's report tries to shed some light on the impact of high-stake summative assessment on innovation. Looney (2009) is convinced that high-stakes assessment and examinations through innovative approaches to testing can be reconciled. Assessments based on high-stake examinations can at times be used as an incentive to teach or study to the test. The mere fact that high-stake assessment examinations acts as incentive to teach or study "to the test" limits risk-taking by teachers, students, and parents.