Standardized Testing In Schools Patrick Ledesma Summary

The true question that everyone should ask is, “does these test reflect the student’s actual learning in school?” Patrick Ledesma says in his article “Do Standardized Tests Reflect Student Learning in Schools?” for Education Week that, “Many teachers quote Albert Einstein when describing the challenges and frustrations they feel towards standardized testing and its impact on their classrooms” (Ledesma). The quote from Albert Einstein that they use is, “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted”. Another quote that is often used is by the Student Learning, Student Achievement Report Task Force that says, “What is tested does count, but much of counts cannot be tested.” These

The unfortunate part of that is, is that teachers are being judged by the students score and performance on a standardized test. This type of judgment is completely unfair to the teacher. The teacher could have done everything they could in the short amount of time they had and the student could just be a poor test taker. In reality, standardized test is an unfair judgment of the teacher and student. When creating standardized test, the creators look at what they call the ‘national norm group’ which represents a large part of the nation, then teachers and parents are supposed to make a useful opinion on a student. One of the opinions that can come out is the student’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, a mother may think that her daughter is a genius in math but is awful in science. Most of the times these test are correct when it comes to identifying student’s strengths and weaknesses. The mathematics section could be forty five questions that are made up of fifteen basic math questions, fifteen geometry questions, and fifteen algebra questions. With the questions being divided up into three different sections it is possible to get a rough estimate rather than an exact idea of the student’s strengths and weaknesses in the three sections of math that was given. More than likely, the test does not have enough meaningful information to give an accurate comparison to the student’s strengths and weaknesses. Another opinion that can be formed by standardized tests is the student’s growth over time in different subjects. For example, a student is given a standardized test every three years. With those tests teachers can see what percentile the student falls into with their performance in different subjects that are almost similar to the test. Unfortunately for students, both their parents and teachers more times than none look too deep into the percentile that the