Each year, thousands of five-year-olds enter kindergarten in the public school system around the nation. Of these children, many of them from different cultural backgrounds, will go on to compete in the rigors of the public school system, and others may fall through the cracks. Since the introduction of “standardizing” education, our nation’s public schools are rife with politics, and politics has no place in the classroom. Indeed, reigning in our “standardized” public education system will benefit both students and teachers within the state of Florida. Florida is one of the nation’s largest states that supports standardized testing, which was used more regularly after the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2002. The NCLB Act mandated annual
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All students have the ability to learn, however, students all have different personalities and different ways of learning that works for them. For example, one student may learn better by watching somebody work out a math problem with tangible items, while another student may learn better by hearing someone speak about a topic. Tests like FCAT do not allow students to fully immerse themselves in the learning process, thus making standardized testing more difficult for students who do not necessarily fit the mold of the type-A student good at memorizing a few strategies and key terms. Research has shown that standardized testing demotes critical thinking and innovation and promotes rote memorization. Standardizing America’s education with exams and testing shows not how the United States’ children will succeed in pushing the country forward in creativity, but how they memorize information, which is not practical in real-world …show more content…
These realities are being faced by teachers and students alike all across the state. Standardized testing costs the Florida Department of Education about $51,577,368 per year, which amounts to approximately $19.44 per student who takes the FCAT and its component tests, the EOCs. If the state were to eliminate standardized testing altogether that is $51.5 million dollars that could be spent in the schools improving technology, arts programs, books, libraries, campuses, and teachers’ salaries. The impact on testing in financial terms is huge. Since the startup of FCAT in 1996, the State of Florida has spent well over $480 million dollars on the creation and scoring of FCAT tests. This cost is fundamentally detrimental to students, who, in some schools, are reading books that are damaged, eating food that is barely edible, and who are trying to get the most out of the slim resources that are available to them. Teachers are underpaid and some must work two jobs just to put food on the table. The average salary for a Florida teacher is $35,236 per year, only eleven thousand dollars over the Florida poverty line for a family of four. Under these circumstances, it is almost impossible for a teacher to have a contingency if something were to go wrong family-wise. The financial burden of testing on school districts statewide is overwhelming, and to reduce
All students have the ability to learn, however, students all have different personalities and different ways of learning that works for them. For example, one student may learn better by watching somebody work out a math problem with tangible items, while another student may learn better by hearing someone speak about a topic. Tests like FCAT do not allow students to fully immerse themselves in the learning process, thus making standardized testing more difficult for students who do not necessarily fit the mold of the type-A student good at memorizing a few strategies and key terms. Research has shown that standardized testing demotes critical thinking and innovation and promotes rote memorization. Standardizing America’s education with exams and testing shows not how the United States’ children will succeed in pushing the country forward in creativity, but how they memorize information, which is not practical in real-world …show more content…
These realities are being faced by teachers and students alike all across the state. Standardized testing costs the Florida Department of Education about $51,577,368 per year, which amounts to approximately $19.44 per student who takes the FCAT and its component tests, the EOCs. If the state were to eliminate standardized testing altogether that is $51.5 million dollars that could be spent in the schools improving technology, arts programs, books, libraries, campuses, and teachers’ salaries. The impact on testing in financial terms is huge. Since the startup of FCAT in 1996, the State of Florida has spent well over $480 million dollars on the creation and scoring of FCAT tests. This cost is fundamentally detrimental to students, who, in some schools, are reading books that are damaged, eating food that is barely edible, and who are trying to get the most out of the slim resources that are available to them. Teachers are underpaid and some must work two jobs just to put food on the table. The average salary for a Florida teacher is $35,236 per year, only eleven thousand dollars over the Florida poverty line for a family of four. Under these circumstances, it is almost impossible for a teacher to have a contingency if something were to go wrong family-wise. The financial burden of testing on school districts statewide is overwhelming, and to reduce