One common factor of most schools and institutions in America today, is the use of standardized testing. These tests can be considered generic tests, administered in a consistent fashion, used to measure and compare the performance of the students in the nation. The tests usually consist of multiple choice questions and are often timed. According to standardized testing scores in America, children are not learning. Parents, teachers and even the government cannot seem to understand why this is happening. All want our children to have the best education available but none agree on how to accomplish this goal. The debates are many, but the most common and often heard supports standardized testing. The problem though, is that standardized testing
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Before standardized testing, teachers and schools were measured by the students’ abilities throughout the year. Now, the focus is on how well students do on these standardized tests. This is forcing teachers to stray from their normal methods of teaching and focus mainly on test preparation. They are being motivated to focus on the scores of these tests, in some states, by the reward of more money given to their school if their students score high. Statistically, those students who attend schools in the lower income areas tend to score lower. In the states that have decided to distribute money based on test scores, this causes the lower income areas to repeatedly be denied the financial aid they need, thus creating an inadequate learning environment and starting the vicious cycle all over again. Some would even go as far as calling this method of distribution discrimination, since there are a larger number of minority students in the lower income neighborhood …show more content…
The decades passed have caused people to forget that this is not the only way to measure a student’s abilities and that there do exist better alternatives (Chomsky et al.). Those opposed to the use of standardized test have explored other avenues and have come across more accurate methods of evaluating our students. Performance assessment is the comparison of a child’s school work over a designated period of time. It looks at the work, and how the student created it, and assesses the rate of improvement. Another method of measuring our students is similar to this. It is called portfolio assessment. This approach also assesses a student’s work over a period of time, but it looks at it in more detail. Portfolio assessment includes assessing areas such as a student’s attraction to certain subjects and their ability for self-evaluation. These portfolios could include a child’s own summary of a story they read or teacher notes on a student’s progress. This type of evaluation is effective in improving learning because it is specific to what is and is not working for a student
Before standardized testing, teachers and schools were measured by the students’ abilities throughout the year. Now, the focus is on how well students do on these standardized tests. This is forcing teachers to stray from their normal methods of teaching and focus mainly on test preparation. They are being motivated to focus on the scores of these tests, in some states, by the reward of more money given to their school if their students score high. Statistically, those students who attend schools in the lower income areas tend to score lower. In the states that have decided to distribute money based on test scores, this causes the lower income areas to repeatedly be denied the financial aid they need, thus creating an inadequate learning environment and starting the vicious cycle all over again. Some would even go as far as calling this method of distribution discrimination, since there are a larger number of minority students in the lower income neighborhood …show more content…
The decades passed have caused people to forget that this is not the only way to measure a student’s abilities and that there do exist better alternatives (Chomsky et al.). Those opposed to the use of standardized test have explored other avenues and have come across more accurate methods of evaluating our students. Performance assessment is the comparison of a child’s school work over a designated period of time. It looks at the work, and how the student created it, and assesses the rate of improvement. Another method of measuring our students is similar to this. It is called portfolio assessment. This approach also assesses a student’s work over a period of time, but it looks at it in more detail. Portfolio assessment includes assessing areas such as a student’s attraction to certain subjects and their ability for self-evaluation. These portfolios could include a child’s own summary of a story they read or teacher notes on a student’s progress. This type of evaluation is effective in improving learning because it is specific to what is and is not working for a student