Educational standards are the foundation of the modern educational endeavor. Statements about educational success imply standards. Measuring whether or not students are being properly educated involves testing them in a particular subject with its prescribed set of grade-appropriate standards that they must meet or exceed. In the United States, most students are put through a battery of tests on a yearly basis to ascertain how students, teacher and schools are performing in comparison to the state standards. From these multiple-choice standardized tests both teachers and schools determine whether their work is successful, as deemed by their state 's department of education. The question is, what do such tests actually tell us about the student …show more content…
How do educators determine the success or failure of our educational project? These questions arc about knowledge itself. Standards are necessary to determine whether someone is educated. On the other hand, all too often in today 's academic institutions much "education" turns out to be mindless submission to a set of educational expectations. When these criteria arc inflexibly put into practice, students suffer. Imagine, for example, a fifth-grade girl in California who has been attending a classical elementary school since kindergarten. Her family moves to another part of the state where there is no classical school for her to attend, so her parents decide to have her attend a traditional elementary school (Tolley, William P). When her academic ability is tested, her teacher informs her parents that she is behind the other students …show more content…
Conversely, vocation should only be seen as a means to free us to pursue a life of reflection that enables us to come to the knowledge of what is true. For education to be successful, educators must understand what constitutes truth. C. S. Lewis wrote, "Truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is, that truth is important might seem obvious, but in today 's society truth is seen as malleable and relative. If we are going to be able to navigate the quagmires of standards and assessment, we need to clearly understand what it means to say something is true, and how this enables us to arbitrate between a student 's correct and incorrect beliefs. The truth is the engine that drives inquiry. The pursuit of the truth involves a desire to understand what is real and avoid what is false (Pettifor, Audrey E., et al). Education enables students to come into contact with what is
The Student Guide to Liberal Learning encourages apprentices to consider the significance of what is truth? James Schall, explains the nature of the universe as an open door to seek guidance through the knowledge of the great thinkers as an attempt to better comprehend the ultimate truth of our reality as a whole, to understand how things perfectly align with each other and how to find the ultimate truth that humanity continuously seeks. Furthermore, Schall states that: “…the truth comes from reality itself, from what is. Truth is our judgment about reality.” Schall lays out the initial quest as form of “clear knowledge of truth” while he persuades to stimulate and spark the curiosity of students to seek his or her own truth of reality through a two-step process:
Today’s schools are classified according to which social class the children’s parents come from. The American education system teaches students to make decisions on aptitude. Harder standards are implemented with the idea that schools will output better students who know more, or who are more inclined to achieve things. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is the reality. Students are being taught to follow methods and instructions rather than making decisions based on experience.
A third and the most obvious way that educators characterize the needs and abilities of their students is with grades. Whether your in first grade and get U's or S's, or your in highschool and get A's, B's, C's, D's, or F's teachers are always judging students ability levels. Anoth...
The United States of America has placed low on the educational ladder throughout the years. The cause of such a low ranking is due to such heavy emphasis on standardized testing and not individual student achievement. Although the United States uses standardized testing as a crutch, it is not an effective measure of a student’s ability, a teacher’s competency, or a school’s proficiency.
Popham, W. James. "Why standardized tests don't measure educational quality." Educational Leadership 56 (1999): 8-16.
Standardized testing assesses students, teachers, and the school itself, which puts a great deal of pressure on the students. High scores show that the school is effective in teaching students, while low test scores make teachers and schools look as though they are not teaching the students properly. This is not always the case. There are teachers who do teach students what they need to know to pass the test, but their students are still unprepared. Although teachers try to improve instruction, student performance is still variable to other factors that the school cannot control.
“Students are taking between ten and twenty standardized tests, depending on the grade. A total average of one hundred thirteen different ones by graduation.”(Locker) A few years ago the United States, along with other nations, was given a test to assess the academic strengths and weaknesses of each nation and rank them accordingly. When the results were released and the United States was ranked near the bottom, it was decided to start incorporating more testing through school. Between benchmark, TLI, PARCC, and common core standards, teaching technique was forced to change. Standardized testing has had a negative effect on teachers and students, implementing inadequate grading standards and the common core curriculum, such testing has made
Current educational policy and practice asserts that increased standardized student testing is the key to improving student learning and is the most appropriate means for holding individual schools and teachers accountable for student learning. Instead, it has become a tool solely for summarizing what students have learned and for ranking students and schools. The problem is standardized tests cannot provide the information about student achievement that teachers and students need day-to-day. Classroom assessment can provide this kind of information.
Standardized testing scores proficiencies in most generally accepted curricular areas. The margin of error is too great to call this method effective. “High test scores are generally related to things other than the actual quality of education students are receiving” (Kohn 7). “Only recently have test scores been published in the news-paper and used as the primary criteria for judging children, teachers, and schools.”(2) Standardized testing is a great travesty imposed upon the American Public School system.
● The children who were receiving a high quality education before the national curriculum is being used to work out the bends in this new system. If we were going to have national standards, there should have been some effort to design a baseline curriculum to be used in the first design of textbooks and testing materials. But I would guess a mix of things, but mostly political pressure and the threat that standardized testing would use common core as its guide and those tests could affect educational funding.
Over the week, I stumbled over this article while I was looking over old copies of Newsweek in the Library. I instantly thought, “Oh an article the president wrote on educational issues, I wonder what that is about.” The article was about issues concerning education in our society today, how poor it is nation wide, and initiatives, including national educational standards, that could potentially raise the educational level throughout our nation. Although the national educational standards issue was not discussed in detail, it is important to note that the president of our nation is aware of them an is trying to help the nation as a whole be aware of them also.
Then the topic of Success comes into play, and it turns out that even schools have unique degrees of success when it comes to educating and testing their students. Let’s begin with
Popham, W. J. (1999, March). Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality. Educational Leadership, 56(6), 8-15.
One solution offered by Alfie Kohn, a well-renowned speaker on human behavior, education, and parenting, suggests that teachers would give parents written evaluations of how their child is performing and having frequent conferences available to talk about their child’s performance. Kohn believes that the most effective teachers do not rely solely on standardized tests. Great teachers are able to observe their students and are able to see without the use of exams how well their students understand the concepts being taught. In 1999, Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup poll surveyed the community. Individuals were asked to choose which of four approaches they felt would be the most precise evaluation of a student’s educational development. Using exam scores from standardized testing received the lowest percentage of 27%. Evaluating work that the students have done over a period of time received the highest number of votes at 33%, while the remainder of the votes were divided between letter grades and written evaluations from teachers after observing each student (Pollard, J, 1999).
“If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn't be here. I guarantee you that.” This quote by Michelle Obama illustrates the idea that standardized testing should not have such a large influence on education in America. However, a majority of people are under the impression that standardized tests are an accurate method to measure a person's intellectual ability. I believe that standardized tests have developed into a very critical part of the American education system that is hindering the growth of students and teachers instead of providing a tool that can accurately measure knowledge.