SOL Testing In Education: A Case Study

Students dread the time of the year when they stop with their course material and begin to prepare for test. Everyone is in agreement that some type of revolution is needed when it comes to education; eliminating standardized test will aid the reform. The need for standardized testing has proven to be ineffective and outdated; some leading educationalist also believe this because the tests do not measure a student’s true potential. This will save money, stop labeling, and alleviate stress in students and teachers.

Next I am going to talk about another reason why SOLs should be banned. You first start getting all these review packets only a few weeks before the tests but you get them for a bunch of classes at once. The problem is most people can not remember most of it. Especially when people have a hard time focusing or remembering when there

This means that teachers should teach the material on the test, taking stress off students to study so hard. Also, it eliminates activities that don’t benefit the students and it’s pushing kids to do their best.     Next, a counter argument will be stated, but then will be

When a teacher is presented with this conflict, going against standard regulations may be tempting. To regulate this, many states have placed strict guidelines where the students’ teacher is not the individual proctoring the test. However, there are still several states that have the teacher administer test to his or her own students, often times without another proctor in the room. This inconsistency between state regulations also proves the biased separation between how students are tested from state to state, causing certain students more opportunities for assistance than others. With this lack of security, it becomes incredibly easy for teachers to go against common regulations, such as allowing more time on sections, allowing students to go back and work on previous sections, or answering any municipal questions the children may ask, or major, such as changing a student’s attempted answer to correct, or opening a test before the test date and teaching the students the exact test questions. These frightening test practices send a message that “examiners should take into consideration the appropriate changes to be done, keeping in mind the professional and standardization of the test” (Farah). Although these test tampering methods can be seen as the teachers way of assisting students with academic disabilities that do not receive the help they need, the

School testing is a very controversial topic. Many people believe that SOL testing is useless and unnecessary, while others believe it is very helpful. In “Problems With Standardized Testing” by Jasmine Evans, she states the issues and irregularities that come with testing. She explains how the stakes are too high, pressuring students harshly: “That pressure to succeed creates a poor environment for learning” (Evans par.

To many students standardized testing has become another part of schooling that is dreaded. Standardized testing has been a part of school since the nineteen-thirties; in those days it was used as a way to measure students that had special needs. Since the time that standardized test have been in American schools there has been many programs that have placed an importance on the idea of standardized testing such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Evans 1). Over the years the importance of standardized testing has increased tremendously and so has the stakes, not only for teachers but also students. All states in the United States of America have state test in order to measure how much students learn, and help tell how well the

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.

almost all schools today students must pass these tests to graduate from high school. These tests

“According to a review of testing research that has been conducted over the past century, over 90% of students have found that standardized tests have a positive effect on their achievement. Students feel better about their ability to comprehend and know subject materials that are presented on a standardized test. Even if a perfect score isn’t achieved, knowing where a student stands helps them be able to address learning deficits.”(12 Advantages and Disadvantages of Standardized Testing). This shows when students are pushed to their limits and they have been working hard in a certain subject they are prepared for test . Teachers in this situation are put to a test also (“Good teachers understand that test preparation drills and specific core instructions to “teach to a test “) . Teachers are put to the test by whether or not they can push students to their best ability to pass the exam. Students and teachers are given the same amount time to teach a specific subject and get judged off of it . This goes back to say all of the stress put on students and teachers is unacceptable because students and teachers should not be judged off of a test

As I stated before, those are only a few pros and cons. Now, to the main question at hand, are the SOL's helping us? In my opinion, no. The SOL's are a useless test that causes useless stress on countless students and teachers. It tests you on how to test. It isn't helpful beside it being better than written tests. In my opinion we should completely get rid of the SOL's and let other items rank the school, like graduation rates, or after school activity options. The only reason SOL's are good is because they get faster return of student scores than paper pencil tests.

A challenge students face is the SOL test because the test can be tricky, they might not have time to study, and they might have after school activities to do. The SOL test is a very tricky test, it has everything you learned that whole year. Some kids might not be able to study because they have chores to do, some chores can take all night. Kids also play after school activities such as sports and clubs like drama. Not all kids can study for the SOL.

With the added pressure to do well in school, standardized testing becomes a means to added stress, anxiety and further complicates the pressure to succeed in a student’s life. Rather than a focus on learning and understanding, school has become a massive rope skill memorization test designed to have students memorize subjects to pass the test, and forget the material the next minute for the next test. When asked to speak about standardized testing, education chairman, Larry Taylor, said “It’s heart-wrenching, and it’s also insanity when you see the level of achievement these kids are already doing and yet they can’t even pass this test.” (Smith). The utilization of standardized testing further exemplifies and validates the idea that no matter how hard or long you work in school, your work will never be worth the few answers you write for the

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).

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

Additionally, standardized tests have the ability to make or break a student. Today, children are being failed, denied access to an advanced program or school, or even refused a high school diploma on the basis of a single standardized test (Sacks 3). Moreover, these tests can determine whether students will spend their summer vacation on the beach or sweating out summer school. Since standardized tests have a great deal of power, students are forced to prepare for them rather than learn valuable knowledge, simply for the sake that they can graduate or enter into the program or school of their choice.