The Success Of Corporate School Reform

The wide-spread use of standardized testing in the American education system is not helping anybody. Standardized testing was designed to help schools see how their students were performing academically in standard way. The NCLB (No Child Left Behind) Act made standardized testing tied to school funding. It made the government reward or punish schools based on test scores. It was made to help students stay on track. Instead, standardized testing is lowering the quality of education in the United States. Standardized testing puts stress on students, forces schools and teachers to “teach to the test”, and has not helped the United States in worldwide education rankings.

When people think of the education system, most can say that there are some problems, though they might not be able to pinpoint what needs to change first. If you ask most teachers, they will say that the first thing that needs to be changed in the schooling system to help the students more is the standardized testing. They will say that while it can be helpful it has a lot of faults and needs to be updated or changed to help its students. Standardized testing has often been a topic for discussion, between parents and people in the schooling system. It seems that a lot of people either hate standardized testing for not giving every child a chance to succeed, or love it for being a fair way to test whether a child knows what they need to know at their age. There have been many articles, books, and documentary’s debating on whether or not standardized testing is doing more harm then good. There was a comic made that shows the brutality and bluntness of what standardized testing is really like. Standardized Testing causes too much stress by putting unfair expectations on teens and doesn’t give every single student the chance to succeed.

“…only twenty-two percent of those surveyed said increased testing had helped the performance of their local schools compared with twenty-eight in 2007” (“Public Skeptical of Standardized Testing.”). Furthermore the poll indicated an eleven percent increase, compared to last year, towards the favor of discontinuing the usage of students’ test results for teacher evaluations. William Bushaw, executive director of PDK International and co-director of PDK/Gallup Poll also stated, “Americans’ mistrust of standardized tests and their lack of confidence and understanding around new education standards is one the most surprising developments we’ve found in years” (“Public Skeptical of Standardized Testing.”). All in all, not only are these tests a concern for students, who are forced to sit through them, hoping to get a decent enough score to place into a class, receive their diploma, or even get accepted to the college of their dreams, but they are a concern for parents as well, who only want the best for their children and to see them succeed.

Standardized testing has become a multi-million dollar business that has shown no substantial progress on the public school system across the nation. Our students and schools are being robbed of expressing creativity and critical thinking skills while major corporations are gaining more and more financial stability. Since the implementation of the harsh testing guidelines, it has forced

Unfortunately, these mandates did not produce the type of results supporters of the law had hope for. “Rather, they taught educators to see accountability as unserious and political” (Bell and Hess). The law produced false positives, resulting in mediocre to poor performances on standardized tests, more public school takeovers and/or overhauling of school districts, controversial teacher reforms, dependence on standardized test preparation rather than classroom-content instruction, and increased academic wrongdoings (e.g., changing of student grades and test-taking fraud).

Anyone who has gone through the public school system in the past 20+ years is familiar with standardized testing. They induce cringing and loathing in students and teachers alike. In 2002 I was 9 years old, enrolled in an urban public school so I too was a lab rat as well as many others to NCLB. I understand now that valuing individual students through standardized tests is a poor means with detrimental consequences and should be replaced with performance-based assessments. Education serves with a specific purpose.

“There is something deeply hypocritical in a society that holds an inner-city child only eight years old "accountable" for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years before,” quote Jonathan Kozol. As this quote apptly states many children are often robbed of simple childhood pleasures by standardized testing. These strenuous tests should be cut back to the absolute minimum. Standardized tests should not be required because they provide unnecessary stress, are often inaccurate because of computer and human error, and some students, particularly minorities, are at a clear disadvantage.

Only recently with the addition of the Common Core Standardized Tests, students are being faced with more tests than ever. A typical student takes 112 mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and 12th grade (Study says standardized...). In my opinion, the complexities of these tests are inclining to a degree where they are unreachable to the average student. These tests are an unreliable measure of performance with unfair instruction time. Student anxiety and stress has become so awful that the Standford-9 exam comes with instructions on what to do in case a student vomits on the test. While the tests are there for students skill-measurement scores, they aren’t the only one’s who need to prepare for the exam. Teachers are equally pressured by their overhead figures to insure student’s score well. Just like the students, standardized tests are an imprecise measure of teacher performance, yet they are used to reward and punish teachers. Teachers are being required to a more progressive teaching style with emphasize on reflective learning. The effects of this are being nicknamed “drill and kill” test prep. Developing a corresponding curriculum prior to these assessments can be tricky because of the ambiguous content the Common Core requires. A considerable majority of these tests are given to students online. These already pricey tests come at an expensive cost for schools. An underlining problem people are concerned about is declining student scores being used as an excuse to close public schools that already can’t afford for the computers to take the test, and open more voucher

Charter schools in the United States were created as a response to the perceived lack of educational achievement among American students. A community of critics consisting of educators, parents, politicians and entrepreneurs came together under the unified belief that current education policy was too restrictive and prohibited educational innovation. As a result, the education reform movement was born. According to the National Conference of State Legislators, “Charter schools are publicly funded, privately managed and semi-autonomous schools of choice. They do not charge tuition. They must hold to the same academic accountability measures as traditional schools. They receive public funding similarly to traditional schools. However, they have more freedom over their budgets, staffing, curricula and other operations.”

Every year, millions of students take long standardized tests, but do they improve the education of American students? In 2000, the US ranked 18th in mathematics worldwide. By 2012, the US dropped to 27th, with similar results in the remaining subjects. After passing the “No Child Left Behind” Act of 2001, the lives of thousands were academically changed. NCLB’s Mission Statement reads: “Our mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” Standardized testing is declining the education in America by placing financial burdens on schools, as well as reprioritizing school choices, unnecessary

Standardized test cause reduced content knowledge. In other words, teach the test criteria and nothing more. The scores that everyone is trying to get only give a person a small amount of the knowledge that, without the test, they would obtain. Theses scores are drilled so hard into a student’s head that they do not know any other thing to do than to pass that test. Barber states in his article that there were three groups of people, elected officials from the school board, the press, and the public. He said that “All three groups were clamoring for something simple and repeatable to use to judge how well their schools were doing.” He goes on to say that they thought standardized testing was just that. They wanted to compare other schools to their school, that it gives them those bragging rights. This will eventually create a ripple effect, and come back on the schools in harmful ways.

Social, cultural, and political variables impact the lives of our children, including their development. One explores the socio-political reality of the Charter School Act of 1998 to our society. There are unwavering viewpoints in favor and staunch positions against the Act. The Charter School Act of 1998 created an antagonistic war of words concerning the direction of public education. Those in favor of the Act purport its favorable addition to public school education. Conversely, opponents argue that charter schools will ultimately privatize public education. Nonetheless, this paper seeks to provide historical background

In this day and age-standardized tests have become the sole way of testing kids, and it's affecting our educational system and schools. As stated by Education Week, an American education news site, every state requires some sort of standardized test that students must take. Our nation is no longer just looking at how kids learn and grow to see if they are achieving. They are measuring this achievement or competency through a test. Additionally, according to the Washington Post,”The average student in America’s big-city public schools takes some 112 mandatory standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and the end of 12th grade” (Valerie Strauss). As important as standardized tests have become, the question begs again, “Which school provides students with the skills needed to learn and perform on these tests”. While both year-round and public schools benefit its students, year-round schools focus on student retention, while public schools focus more on standardized tests.

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.

A very current and ongoing important issue happening within the education system is standardized testing. A standardized test is any examination that's administered and scored in a calculated, standard manner. There are two major kinds of standardized tests: aptitude tests and achievement tests. Standardized aptitude tests predict how well students might perform in some subsequent educational setting. The most common examples are the SAT’s and the ACT’s. The SAT and the ACT attempt to estimate how well high school students will perform in college. But standardized test scores are what citizens and school board members rely on when they evaluate a school's effectiveness. Nationally, five such tests are in use: California Achievement Tests,