Testing And The Testing Industry

State-mandated standardized testing has lately become a monster to be feared by students from the beginning of their school career. According to well respected educational author Alfie Kohn, “[…] Most of today’s discourse about education has been reduced to a crude series of monosyllables: Test scores are too low. Make them go up” (Kohn 1). Why all the testing? Some is to meet the federal government requirements, some to meet state requirements, some for the district and some for the school, and still more tests are given simply to help students prepare for the ones already mentioned. So much testing has reduced time for instructors to actually teach. In addition, many of the tests neglect to cover all important material,

The NCLB Act has obligated the government to find a way to keep track of progress, which, in their minds, is administering high-stakes tests. High-stakes testing is scrutinized all the time, since some believe it is the only indicator of tracking students and teachers. They seemed to have been ridiculed by many and favored by few; nonetheless there are significant disparities in the public’s and government’s opinion. According to Dunne (2000), “Tests aren't just tests anymore -- at least not high-stakes tests, which are being used in some states to determine which students stay back a grade, which high school seniors receive diplomas, which teachers get bonuses, and more.”

In 2005 Public Education Network conducted a survey asking about different aspects of No Child Left Behind. 67% of the people surveyed said No Child Left Behind requires too much testing for students and only 16% thought the amount of testing was “just right.” When asked, what provisions are essential to closing the achievement gap between children of various groups, the aspects that people thought were most important were tutoring, adequate funding and

“Man, having to take these ridiculous standardized tests are just a huge waste of not only our time but the teacher’s time stressing about it, “stated my friend, Ian Jahn. This quote is what many students in this decade are agreeing with because of the lack of purpose the test holds. The No Child Left behind Act is the most current edition of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the major federal law authorized the federal spending on programs to support kindergarten to the end of high school. Elementary and Secondary Education Act is the largest source of federal spending on elementary and secondary education (Evans 1). Not only does this test cost too much this test also has way too much impact because

Standardized Testing have been ubiquitous in America for more than 50 years. It originates from China where they used similar test systems to gauge individual’s Confucian philosophy and poetry for government jobs. After No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed in America in 2001 to ensure high quality student achievements through tests (Yell 180-181), the use of these standardized tests rose. Western World

Many stakeholders’ in public education are seeking solutions to produce high achieving students who graduate ready to embrace technological challenges. One solution for many stakeholders’ seems to be high stakes testing. High stakes testing is an educational reform where decisions are based on individual student performance, teacher performance, and school performance. The tests are usually performed as an end of course or end of grade assessment after completion of the curriculum. The No Child Left Behind Act or NCLB signed by President Bush in 2001 was mandated to improve student performances and remove inequalities among diverse student populations. This Act required states to design and develop programs that employed test- based

Although standardized testing has been a partial component of many schools’ curriculums since the 1800’s, its popularity rapidly increased after the “No Child Left Behind Act” was passed in 2002. This Act stated that from that point onward, it was necessary for children in all fifty states to complete some form of a standardized examination annually. But are these tests genuinely an efficient and reliable way of testing a student's knowledge? . Due to the the pressures of having to perform perfectly on standardized examinations, many children and teachers feel the need to game the system, making the results of these tests inaccurate. Not only are the examination results

Standardized testing has become a yearly fixture in classrooms around the United States. Legislation such as No Child Left Behind holds educators and administrators responsible for the learning of students. One way to assess this learning is through the use of a standardized test, the results of which can be compared to a predetermined benchmark. I believe it’s a good idea to hold educators accountable for the work they perform in the classroom and to hold school administrators accountable for education outcomes. However, the means by which this accountability is currently being evaluated—standardized testing—is detrimental to both schools and students alike, and it should be discontinued. Standardized testing of young children produces potentially meaningless results, is potentially discriminatory against certain populations, and forces educators to modify their instruction (potentially for the worse) in an effort to avoid being punished for not meeting required benchmarks.

After the Introduction of NCLB, test driven accountability has become the norm in public schools. Other stakeholders in the education sector have raised concerns that reliance on test as a measure of educational achievement may be misleading a move that NCLB has defended saying that theirs has been to direct attention to low achieving students with a view to improving their performances (Dee & Jacob, 2010). Analyses that have been conducted by stakeholder organizations have shown that NCLB impacts particular schools and districts differently.

Since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) the number of standardized tests conducted in American education has exploded leaving parents and educators alike to question how all this time and focus spent on testing is impacting the learning process? The answer to this question is critical to understanding if the NCLB is accomplishing its goal or eroding the American education system. The proliferation of standardized tests has fundamentally changed the structure of classroom instruction by shifting much of the focus to test preparation or teaching to the test as it is commonly known. This change in education approach towards teaching to the test is hurting America’s

Under No Child Left Behind, standards and assessments rest tightly at the national education policy, and remain as the strongest force on policy and practice. Despite the importance of high-stakes testing to improve America’s public education system, there have been numerous effects on schools, teachers, and even the students.

Students have shown some small increases in test scores since 2002, when NCLB became a law, but they are nothing compared to what was predicted and promised (Strauss). Our government has invested huge amounts of time and money into increasing student test scores, but we have very little to show for it (Strauss). In fact, there is no evidence that better test scores help students in the real goals of education, which are to promote critical thinking, make lifelong learners, and to prepare children for real life (Strauss). Many people who would disagree on most issues, agree that the time taken for students to take the tests, along with the narrowed curriculum, and teaching to the tests, have had a very negative effect on overall student learning (Strauss). In the end, testing will document student achievement on individual, district, and state levels, and can give teachers insight into what needs to be done to help improve test scores. But the constant testing of students does very little to help their actual learning and may even hinder it

As we saw, proponents of NCLB point out that test scores have improved since 2002. But critics are not certain that the law is responsible for because the schools’ tests have improved since the 1980’s. Since the1970’s, documentation show an increase of students taking the test SAT and ACT tests. In fact these tests that were once optional became more popular during that era. Because children at all levels were taking those tests, test cores declined drastically in the 70’s and 80’s. Furthermore, critics of NCLB say that better schools are not indicative of the success of this

Today, schools are currently racing to get ahead, regarding high test scores as some kind of achievement even though results don’t always measure student learning as intended. The United States’ heavy reliance on multiple-choice exams exceeds that of most countries and contributes to wasted time, money, and a limited education for poor and minority students. Although change is beginning, a solution is far from tangible with legislation needing to catch up to public opinion. For now, students are suffering inordinate amounts of pressure to do well on state standardized tests and are putting up with an education lacking in areas that don’t pertain to such tests. However, with active particpation and protest of current federal education standards, one day students may be judged by more than the numerical values presented to them on their computer screens. In the end, one thing remains certain, the real problem is not with the students who take these tests or with the teachers who prepare them, the true issue lies in the way educators choose to use their results, often exceeding their

Associations to which test specialists belong agree that the validity standard depends on the test’s context and it’s used. A test may be validated for some uses and not others (Smith et al., 2000). McDonnell (1997) found that the political community believed the benefits of the assessment policy would outweigh any harm that might be caused by less than reliable or invalid tests. Some may wonder why teaching to the test is not a good practice and a healthy basic skills emphasis. They may even suggest that teaching to the test results is basic instruction even in the least advantaged educational situations. Research indicates that there is little evidence to indicate that high-stakes accountability testing and reform have had much impact on overall school performance beyond increased scores on the individual test that was the instrument of the state policy (Mehrens, 1998). Theory validity of TAAS fell short of professional standards in other ways: While Texas scores on the math part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have risen dramatically—the results, perhaps, of all that drill and test practice—Texas students made only small gains in the NAEP reading test between 1992 and 1998, no gain what so ever between 1993 and 1996 on nationally normed achievement tests in reading, and not much gain in other subjects…They have not made much gain on the SAT, either (Schrag, 2000).Since 1999, Texas has begun to administer the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills exam and has continued to follow the high stakes consequences for failing the tests at the 3, 6 and 10th grades. This current test battery has been said to be more difficult than the earlier basic skills exams. One result of the wide use of exams to measure student achievement has been the growth of alternative education. The website for the Texas