Reality Test Should Be Used For School

Getting an education is the main goal for everyone, although it is easy to obtain there are some obstacles to it. One of the main obstacles students face at the beginning of their education is standardized tests. Schools have started to adopt this type of tests as their main way to evaluate students’ intelligence and teachers’ effectiveness to educate the students. The way students used to learn has changed, in order to get them ready for the tests they have to spend much of the school time preparing for it instead of learning something they can use in their future life. According to Bruce Jacobs in No Child Left Behind's Emphasis on 'Teaching to the Test' Undermines Quality Teaching, a 2007 study by the University of Maryland teachers were put in much pressure and had thoughts to teach the test […]. This shows that teachers have also been affected by standardized tests in a way they have more pressure to make students pass. Having teachers ‘teach the test’ means their way to educate has been corrupted. In most cases when teachers’ ability to educate has been changed leads them to practice methods not convenient for scholars. One of these methods is memorization, in Relying on High-Stakes Standardized Tests to Evaluate Schools and Teachers: A Bad Idea by Hani Morgan describes how students start to adapt to an “inferior type of learning, based on memorization and recall students gain when teachers

Standardized testing is not made to test every student. These tests often ask one sided, bias questions. Claims have been brought against standardized tests in court due to bias. How are they supposed to measure the ability of every student when every student is different? Students learn differently and preform differently depending upon the type of test given. Some students are stronger with essay questions, some with matching, and some with true and false. Some students could not even know the material but get a multiple choice question right through process of elimination. How is this a fair way to measure knowledge? It is not fair to the students that actually study for these tests and know the information required.

The use of standardized testing to measure students’ knowledge is an inaccurate reflection of their capabilities. By being forced to take a test that does not effectively show their abilities, students become overstressed, and the tests themselves do not promote true academic achievement. Rather than learning about subjects in order to gain knowledge, students simply memorize facts and formulas to get a decent test score. Standardized tests are not an appropriate measure of student performance, only benefit certain groups of students, and do not prepare students for the real world.

Yes, tests are an important method to evaluate a student’s performance. In fact, tests demonstrate a student’s progress in the class, demonstrating what the student knows or does not know. It is the result or the outcome that needs modifications. After a paper or test or project is submitted to the instructor for assessment, that paper or test is given a value or a number based on the quality of the work, and this is the problem. This creates the illusion of learning because the end goal circulates in obtaining a high grade, not learning. In Pippin’s article concerning grades (352), she asserts, “students may be working hard for a hard grade and not for deeper learning. The interest is in the reward of the grade, not the

This idea of teaching to the test is a complete waste of educational time, that is spent preparing students for this extremely important test, that could be time going into learning things that will prepare students for college and life after college. The reason teachers do this is because they are under such pressure from the school districts to have good scores on these tests, due to the increase in funding to schools that do well and the lack in funding to schools that do poorly, that they can only find the time to prepare for these standardized tests instead of “teaching students skills that go beyond the tests”

Jeannie Fulbright was right when she said, “If the purpose for learning is to score well on a test, we’ve lost sight of the real reason for learning.” (teacherswithapps.com). The real reason for learning and a good education is one that will not only bring success in life, but one that will bring joy and wisdom. A life where one is not curious and eager to learn new information is a dull one. Schools should be striving to make their students believe in this and the power that knowledge brings. Instead, schools are so caught up in preparing their students for tests that what they don't realize is that they are turning students against education. Students want to be asked about their views on world that they will one day control and the impact they hope to make in their lifetime, but their education is so driven towards scoring well on a test that they are never able to fully speak their minds. Education is becoming a haunting thing to these young minds, and that is all due to standardized testing and the effects it brings. Most people go to grade school for twelve years of their lives. Those twelve years are their youth, a time that is irreplaceable. Youth should be driven by wonder, hopes, and aspirations, not the memorization of the quadratic formula or the periodic table of elements. It's not the teacher's fault that the lives of students revolve around these

They do not do an acceptable job in furthering a child’s learning. Learning is much more than a test. There are students that may do very well at choosing the right answer, but not truly be learning anything that will help them later on in life. “Standardized tests, by virtue of being multiple-choice, don’t allow for students to express themselves.” (Evans) Students learn the most by expressing themselves to others. Bringing to light the flaws in standardized testing, this shows that in reality, these tests hold students back in their learning. Since standardized testing is such a big part, other important things are being held back from students because of the time in the classroom that is spent preparing students for these

Students are spending increasing amounts of time preparing for and taking competitive standardized tests. Standardized testing has been a controversial subject of discussion. This does not improve student achievement or teacher performance. Some are for these tests because of how it provides students, parents, and the government with information on the student's progress. Although most schools make students take standardized tests, it does not measure the knowledge of a student, causes disadvantages for students and teachers, and can be bias or unfair.

I feel the emphasis on testing unfairly focuses on funding rather than the education of the students. With teachers and administration fighting to keep their schools open cheating is occurring at an increasing rate and results are inaccurate. I feel it is important to teach the students what needs to be taught, rather than worrying about the abundance of test prep. The stress to perform well on standardized

Ever since then standardized testing has been a huge part of education. Teachers across the nation had to teach to the curriculum instead of what they thought the students needed to learn. Nowadays colleges strictly look at ACT and SAT scores rather than classroom grades, because they believe that some teachers grade on a curve and are not giving the students a fair chance. Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance. A 2001 study published by the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-over-year tests core improvements were temporary and “caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning…”(“Standardized Tests”). Teachers are stressed over if they are teaching “correctly”. They went to a 4-year college, some even more, to get a degree in something that they wanted to do, either for themselves or for the children, and now they have to “teach to the test”. Tests can only measure a portion of the goals of education. A pschometrician, Daniel Koretz says, “standardized tests usually do not provide a direct and complete measure of educational achievement.”(Harris, Harris, and Smith).

The simple idea of having a test with only answers that are right or wrong does not apply to the real world in which education is supposed to be targeted toward. Educating children for the future. Hindering their ability to make real world decisions when their answering right or wrong questions only. This is not benefiting the students instead neglecting their skills that go beyond tests. This is not a good quality of education. Children should be prepared to face the real world decisions where it’s not always black or white.A child answering a right or wrong answer doesn’t show the students how to make a proper decision with more than one answer, and does nothing to teach him or her about making decisions.According to Stanford University researchers Linda Darling-Hammond and Laura McCloskey. Success has been achieved using "assessments that encourage students to be active learners who can find, analyze, and use information to solve problems in novel situations." Not from just questions with a right or wrong answer. The Negative impact on curriculum and instruction writes. Surveys of teachers in Massachusetts (Abrams et al., 2003; Clarke et al., 2003) and nationally (McMurrer, 2007; Moon et al., 2003; Hinde, 2003) show a marked increase in teaching to the test and narrowing the curriculum to tested subjects as a result of high-stakes testing. In addition,

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

These forms of test either overestimate students or underestimate them. Often students that test well usually cannot explain how they got the answer they did or why it is right. Meanwhile, standardized tests are unfair to the students who are brilliant thinkers,but do not test well. Wrong answers do not always mean an absence of understanding , just like correct answers do not alway indicate understanding.

Standardized tests do not asses skills when their questions are generalized for an entire population. Most of the time, the tests are not in conjunction with classroom skills and behavior. These tests asses for general knowledge and understanding of students rather that their actual abilities. Since the questions are general in nature, it becomes very difficult for teachers to know how to improve the students understanding of a particular subject based on just general information. This leads to teachers “teaching to test” rather than educating students in a proper way based on the real needs of the classroom. Another reason these tests do more bad than good is the fact that teachers actually have a test booklet instructing them on what to do if a student vomits during a test. Students study so hard for these tests and simply cannot handle the pressure. So in the end, their final scores reflect not their abilities, but the influences of their surrounding factors instead.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of students across the nation are required to take many standardized tests. Which are used to determine student’s achievement, progress and growth. These tests supposedly say the outcome of how much knowledge a student has or has not learned. The stakes are high all because of a test score. Standardized tests may determine a pass or fail status for grade levels through K-12 or admission into colleges if you are taking an ACT or SAT standardized test. It is unfair and a very unreliable method to use to measure the performance of students. Standardized testing methods creates more harm than good and should be revised because many students, teachers, and schools suffer from this annually.