James Popham Analysis

Schools in the U.S are still based upon 1900th century factories. In the nineteenth century only 17% of jobs required workers to be educated. Now over 65% of jobs require their workers to have a high school diploma. Our schools are based upon the essence monolithically processed students in batches. By instituting grades and having a teacher focus on just one set of students of the same academic proficiency,

Carol Burris is a principle and co-author to the book “Opening the Common Core”. In her article “I was naïve about the Common Core”, she addresses many personal experiences and negative outcomes from the modern day state standards for school districts. The Common Core is a set of state standards that schools teach to students so they have the skills, habits and knowledge to be successful for college and post high school careers. While in the beginning of the article she claims she was completely for this method of teaching, she later describes how gruesome it truly was to the students. The overwhelming stress to the children through extensive evaluations and tests became

Now, with the recent implementation of the Common Core Program, more pressure has fallen on teachers to follow the guidelines with exactness. “Today, teachers are being forced to follow a script. They teach to the tests and fear job loss if they don’t see the expected results. The result of this test giving, job loss fearing style of teaching, is written all over the faces of the little kids caught in the transition” (Hurley). This new and improved “script” holds

By believing that instructors are the most important influence in a child’s education, teachers are given an unrealistic responsibility. Many policymakers believe that holding educators accountable for student success is the best way to improve public education. This asks educators to overcome these outside variables that are far outside of teachers’ control. Policymakers suggested linking teacher evaluations to student achievement, measured by standardized tests. This is not a beneficial way to hold teachers accountable because of the many outside factors that affect student achievement. A better way to hold teachers accountable is to stem out of a realistic perspective on what teachers can and should do for their students. Each part of society holds an important responsibility in increasing student achievement. Teachers should not be asked to be responsible for more than they can handle.

Many educators have seen The No Child Left Behind Act as both a success and an inadequacy. Introduced in 2001, the Act’s intention was to reform education at that time. It was a step in the right direction, however, like most things, it didn’t solve the problem.  The Act pushed education to seek standardized testing as the only mean to evaluate a school’s quality of education. In fact, Robert Rothman, Scott F. Marion, and Helen Ladd believe that education needs reform. They confront their different positions on the issue in two articles. Ladd’s article is more admirable than Rothman’s and Marion’s. Ladd fulfills her purpose for writing the article in a better manner than Rothman and Marion because she communicates the issue in a formal, but

High stakes assessments are damaging our education system because all the important decisions are being made base in one assessment and not taking under consideration other evaluations. I would like to see a change in the way students, teachers and schools are being evaluated, I want to see a balance between the decisions that is affecting students. I want our schools to teach the curriculum and not a test. I don’t want students feel pressure and stop learning because of the fear of one

I found De-testing and de-grading schools: Authentic alternatives to accountability and standardization by Bower and Thomas, an interesting read and consistent with the critiques of high stakes testing and assessment we’ve read about and watched in this class. It is a collection of essays from educators and stakeholders in the field. The book is broken up into distinct sections, the first focused on testing and the second on grading. A historical context regarding failures of testing and grading is also provided to give context to the current problems with high stakes assessment and grading. The main message presented in this book is that high stakes testing and assessments (grading) are not working and alternatives should be considered. Specifically, the law of No Child Left Behind is critiqued through out, especially in the first few chapters.

With this, a team of people such as retired educators, spend time at the school examining performance and curriculum, interviewing teachers and administrators, and shadowing students. This method is appreciated by districts who use it because it is believed to encourage accountability, since educators are reviewed along with the students. In all, the practice of testing is a practice deeply rooted in the U.S. school system, but there are definitely alternatives, these alternatives containing less downsides standardized testing. The issue lies within implementation, which only the future will tell if the U.S. will evolve from standardized

In many districts, raising test scores has become the single most important indicator of school improvement. As a result, teachers and administrators feel enormous pressure to ensure that test scores go up. Schools narrow and change the curriculum to match the test. Teachers teach only what is covered on the test. Methods of teaching conform to the multiple-choice format of the tests. Teaching more and more resembles testing.

If you spend any time in a public school, you will most definitely hear the words standardized testing and higher students’ scores. I believe that the push for schools to excel in high-stakes, standardized tests has caused schools to revert back to a form of New Taylorism. Due to the threat of public funding loss for failing scores, teachers are mainly focusing on curriculum directly related to the tests, even if that means leaving out certain topics, activities, or learning situations (Au, 2014). When going through certification, teachers are taught to teach to different students’ needs, but now we are giving these students the same standardized tests (Schifter & Carey, 2014). The New Taylorism of scientific, standardized testing focuses

Throughout the day teachers are faced with teaching math, science, language arts, and social studies. While teaching these subjects the teacher has to be educated in all of the different subjects because students will have questions about all of the different subjects. In classrooms today, many subjects are focused on math, reading, and writing because these are the subjects on the standardized tests. Depending on the district and state, there may be outlines of the curriculum. For example all of the elementary schools in Albany County’s district follow the same math outline. With this being said, I do think it is important to follow these outlines, but I think it is important that we are not focused on the assessment. Teachers’ should be focused on the students’ learning and how they are retaining the information. While learning to teach I have watched a few teachers shut down students; questions about certain subjects because it was not a subject they needed to learn. Throughout the year we will have to cover different standards and take multiple assessments, but throughout the school year I want my students to feel excited and ask questions. Questions allow students and teachers to grow, and theses questions may not fall in the standardized test are. These questions are so important and as teachers we should answer them because our student are interested in what they are asking. Teachers have the responsibility to make sure students feel like they

Educators are often required to impart a large amount of information to students in limited timeframes which may be conducive to higher test scores in the immediate present, but doesn’t necessarily transition to long term internalization of the material. Additionally, the need to teach for specific subject matter relevant to standardized tests oftentimes does not allow for a comprehensive and well-rounded exposure to a myriad of other subjects or activities, and does not support creative or individual expression.

I think that Dewey would be quite critical of the standards and assessment movements that we have today and how it ignores the contexts of teaching and ignores what students bring to the classroom. Dewey did not see any sort of division between academic and vocational learning. He thought that they were two sides to the same issue. His students in his school learned by active hands-on kinds of learning within the classroom but also outside are constructing things and learning about tools and

Educational trends shape the classrooms throughout the world. From desegregation to inclusion of special needs students to student and teacher accountability, it seems as though the system is endlessly evolving. The United States of America has a history of the wanting to be the best but the education system has been tormenting the powers that be since it’s inception. Thus the need for constant reform is the only sensible outcome. Continuously, as a country we’ve fallen short of the top, but there has to be an answer, right? Of course there is and it lies in teaching smarter, not harder according to school administrators and districts. As most teachers know, these can be one in the same with the availability of data to drive instruction and the need to individualize that instruction. Ultimately, the stars must align on those crucial days of the standardized tests, as the students strive to put it all together to see how they match up with the rest of the world. Matching up has created a major issue in the Education community because it has raised a question about teaching to the test and the implications of those actions. Fortunately, the Government has found the answer as always, and began its implementation of the Common Core State Standards in 2009 (Common Core State Standards Initiative, n.d.). It appears that these standards have been the soul mate educators have been looking for to unlock the mystery that is necessary for learning and performance to be aligned. Indeed

Assessments focus on the outcome of a specific teaching goal, and it clearly defines some knowledge students are receiving from teaching instructions. Newman argues that "the most important element of assessment is how it guides the learner and teacher in the next steps of the learning process (Newman, 2013). Assessments are the best way to measure student 's weaknesses, and growth so that students receive the highest quality of education possible. Its vitality in schools takes priority in the teaching and learning the process. Newman reminds us that the validity of the assessment is the extent to which it measures what it was designed to measure (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). Therefore, to gauge the quality of education students are receiving teachers must efficiently and consistently assess students, as well as create individualize lessons to meet their need.