Strategies for Test Taking and Their Effects Essay

Henry L. Roediger III believes that “testing as part of an educational routine provides an important tool not just to measure learning, but to promote it” (Roediger pg. 1). If we stop forcing students to shove information down

Preparations for tests should ideally begin much earlier than shortly before the actual test taking period. Indeed, many students perform dismally in their tests because of their failure to understand this and many other principles of test and exam preparation. In addition to discussing how students should prepare for tests, this text will also identify the various strategies which should be embraced by students during test taking in an attempt to enhance performance.

Many teachers these days are “teaching to the test” and hurting their students in the process. The students are not properly taught to retain information that will be helpful in the future. Many students are taught to memorize the information for the test and to never look back on that information until an exam, where the whole memorizing process starts again. The information is never fully learned or understood. “ students ... have very little idea how they can apply the information throughout their lives” (Source F). Many students cannot remember what they have learned up to the current week, and many researchers have found that since the information is not currently being used, it has been pushed to the back of the mind and in most cases, forgotten. Researchers have found that many students forget up to 60% of material that they learned in high school before moving to a university. The information that has been consumed by students is not being applied in real life situations. And the tests will not help students in the future with getting jobs or any real-world knowledge. “Instead of being able to explain what they can DO with the information they have learned (i.e., order food at a restaurant from language class, determine appropriate change while shopping from math class), students often only cite the technical

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.

This study also stated that, “every standardized test has a certain “error of measurement” which means that a given score could actually be off by several points in either direction. High stakes, however, have single scores as the cut-off point. Those scores do not account for the inaccuracies that all test publishers acknowledge”(azstandards). There have been many studies in which students take the same test on different days, and their score varies greatly. High stakes testing does not give any consideration to these errors.

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.

          The test taking tutorial taught me different strategies for different types of test. For multiple choice test I have learned to eliminate options that are unrelated to the question. I learned to do that because I would sometimes just pick what sounded good and not really read the rest of the choices available. I also had a problem with essay test. One strategy I would use that is to check my answer for grammar, spelling, and completion. I used to not do that because I felt rushed, but when I would get my test back it would be all marked up with corrections that needed to be made, resulting in a bad grade. On matching test I learned to single out the correct answers by going down the left column and figuring out the questions that I knew and leaving the ones that I wasn’t to sure on, and that would make It easier to single out the right answers.

Standardized testing is an overemphasized aspect of the modern education system. All states use some form of standardized testing, and in recent years, it has become a deciding factor in a student’s ability to graduate. But, how effective are these tests? They aren’t. They don’t test a student’s aptitude, they only test the ability for a student to hold information, not apply it. State testing must be removed on the grounds that it inhibits the critical thinking abilities of younger generations, and it misrepresents a student’s aptitude for learning.

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.

Nichols, Glass, and Berliner (2012) states that “high stakes testing is the process of attaching significant consequences to standardized test performance with the goal of incentivizing

Today, it can be observed that society has shifted education drastically from the time schools were constituted, to now. Throughout history, schools have gone from private, where only the elite can attend, to public schools where virtually anyone can attend. One of the factors that goes along with education is standardized testing. Frederick J. Kelly, father of the standardized test, once said, “These tests are too crude to be used, and should be abandoned.” Not only has this shift occurred within education itself, but it has occurred within the testing concepts found within standardized testing so much so that the founder of these tests has chosen to give up on it.

Standardized tests do a wonderful job of supplying the evidence needed to make norm-referenced interpretations of students' knowledge and skills in relationship to those of students nationally. The educational usefulness of those interpretations is considerable. However, the achievement is not the same as learning. When we focus on achievement, we are talking about the test scores and we could miss out on whether or not the students are actually learning.

Throughout this paper, I will be discussing how important high stakes testing is to our country. First, I will show how these tests prevent students from moving on to the next grade level or graduate without the skills necessary. Secondly, I will discuss

High-stakes testing is an educational strategy that affects students, teachers, and society as a whole. The topic of high-stakes testing has been supported and discredited by many educators, politicians, and citizens. Nationally, schools are using high-stakes testing for a variety of reasons. The American Educational Research Association discussed high-stakes testing and issued a statement that read:

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