As time has passed high-stakes and standardized testing have become the backbone for the United States educational system. This type of testing is flawed in many ways and has diminishing returns at the cost of a students sanity, time, and overall knowledge of a subject. For these reasons, high-stakes testing should be stopped and replaced with something more realistic for all students to achieve. We all know taking high-stakes tests are stressful but for a portion of students it makes them physically and mentally weakened, “Children are pressured to not only demonstrate their knowledge but to represent the effectiveness of their teachers and their schools. Teachers are reporting children throwing up, losing control of their bowels, and increased commitments for psychiatric and anxiety issues.” The evidence comes from real teachers that have to help these students through testing. An example like this clearly shows that these tests damage students, either mentally or physically which is never good for anyone. In light …show more content…
“There’s less time for learning with testing and test prep (for example, Pittsburgh students now take 20-25, or more, high-stakes tests a year, with new tests this year in art and music)” (Supovitz line 43). With some of these tests taking an entire class period or more to complete these tests dig into time reserved for introducing new topics or mastering old ones. That leads to teachers not reaching a certain spot in the curriculum and may lead to school being extended, and in college now classes, the students may not get the college credits. Due to these glaring issues, high-stakes testing should be replaced with something more student (and teacher) friendly that doesn’t take up valuable time in the classroom, which should be spent on furthering the students
Testing is a way to measure what students have learned from their teachers. Standardized/High-Stakes testing is a tool used to measure the performance of students and the quality of teachers in public school systems. High-Stakes testing is an inaccurate measuring stick of teaching quality and thus is detrimental to the educational system.
On each test instruction booklet handed to the teachers on test day, there is a section including what to do if a student throws up during a test. For this section to be included, it is obvious that testing has caused students in the past to stress themselves out to the point of being sick. Students are spend most of the year preparing to take one or two big tests in the end. The amount of pressure put on students to succeed on these tests is astronomical, making it impossible to focus on the actual goal of assessing their knowledge. A student in Florida spoke to her school board about the absurd expectations from these tests, “Every year I do good in school, but I get low test scores on the FCAP and it feels like a punch in the stomach. This is unfair and I don't want to lose my opportunity to take my advanced classes or get a better education because of this one test.” (Locker) Some students simply do not test well, others try their hardest and still cannot reach the impracticable standards set for them. The individuals who create these test do not understand the pressures of being a student, or the struggle to answer thirty-five questions in a compressed time period. One test cannot accurately measure the intelligence of a
Students dread the time of the year when they stop with their course material and begin to prepare for test. Everyone is in agreement that some type of revolution is needed when it comes to education; eliminating standardized test will aid the reform. The need for standardized testing has proven to be ineffective and outdated; some leading educationalist also believe this because the tests do not measure a student’s true potential. This will save money, stop labeling, and alleviate stress in students and teachers.
tests were primarily employed as measures of student achievement that could be reported to parents, and as a means of noting state and district trends (Moon 2) . Teachers paid little attention to these tests, which in turn had little impact on curriculum. However, in the continuing quest for better schools and high achieving students, testing has become a central focus of policy and practice. Standardized tests are tests that attempt to present unbiased material under the same, predetermined conditions and with consistent scoring and interpretation so that students have equal opportunities to give correct answers and receive an accurate assessment. The idea is that these similarities allow the highest degree of certainty in comparing result...
Standardized testing is not an effective way to test the skills and abilities of today’s students. Standardized tests do not reveal what a student actually understands and learns, but instead only prove how well a student can do on a generic test. Schools have an obligation to prepare students for life, and with the power standardized tests have today, students are being cheated out of a proper, valuable education and forced to prepare and improve their test skills. Too much time, energy, and pressure to succeed are being devoted to standardized tests. Standardized testing, as it is being used presently, is a flawed way of testing the skills of today’s students.
Standardized testing remains to be a major controversial issue for the American society today. Exams are given to students at different levels in their educational career and are supposed to measure their academic knowledge, but are these tests really the best way to evaluate students? There have been numerous alternatives suggested to replace or be used in conjunction with standardized testing.
There is added pressure to schools to get better scores which adds pressure to the educators and the students. The added pressure can cause health problems with the students or the educators. If health problem come from the stress of the tests it could negatively affect the student’s ability to learn (Pros and Cons, 2013). The test itself is a problem as well. The test is supposed to be unbiased based on the grade level but in most cases the test is not. As much as they try...
Standardized tests are used to evaluate a student’s performance, however, tests do not take external factors into account. This already means that tests are often inaccurate methods of measuring a students academic potential. Also, the tests do a disservice to students as they evaluate their proficiency at a time of testing, rather than their growth and improvement over the course of the year. The tests have become an outdated method of challenging students and only have negative impacts at this point. The tests develop high levels of stress in students, which is not healthy for an individual during the most important development years of their lives. Eliminating these tests will assist students in the long run as they can accommodate more time towards learning information rather than stressing over a single test. By replacing tests with more in-class lessons students will be free of constant stress and still learn the curriculum. Research shows that students are unable to remember information on standardized tests in the long run, therefore, by spending more time learning and understanding information, students are able to have a better understanding of topics. Therefore, by removing standardized tests students will be provided with a better, more effective, and fair educational
Stecher, “The net effect of high-stakes testing on policy and practice is uncertain. Researchers have not documented the desirable consequences of testing—providing more instruction, working harder, and working more effectively—as clearly as the undesirable ones—such as negative reallocation, negative alignment of classroom time to emphasize topics covered by a test, excessive coaching, and cheating. More important, researchers have not generally measured the extent or magnitude of the shifts in practice that they identified as a result of high-stakes testing.” Which means that in completion no test is truly valid or reliable for there are too many mistakes to be had by either the test takers or the Test
The first major learning regarding high stakes assessment from the video "Teachers, parents push back against high stakes testing" is the fact that the results of this type of assessment form the basis for scholarship application, admission in programs for talented and gifted students as well as other educational establishments. Another thing that I found out about high stakes assessment is that it has become subject to strong criticism both amongst parents and among teachers for the unrelenting pressure, it brings on children. What I also found out about this type of assessment from another video is that there is growing evidence that it negatively affects the quality of education ("High Stakes Testing and Student Success", 2013).
Over the course of the past couple decades high-stakes testing has become a way to analyze student’s performance year after year. High-stakes testing is a way of testing that includes serious consequences for students, teachers, administrators, etc. (Jones, G., Jones, B., & Hargrove, T., 2003). A form of high-stakes testing that is most common is standardized tests issued by the government at state level based on each state’s standards. The ultimate goal of high-stakes testing is to educate students to be able to compete in a global market (Spring, J., 2000) and enter the labor force successfully. One of the greatest complications with this measurement discussed in this paper is the effectiveness of this goal and how it is measured.
The author addresses paper and pencil tests with no special accommodations, and analyses trends throughout past decades. He also writes of the new era of standardized testing and accountability. Stiggins suggests that while standardized testing may be useful and effective in some aspects, most are not used correctly and that the high-stakes put intense pressure on teachers, making it difficult to actually complete their job which is to teach students new skills. They simply spend their time reviewing already learned skills to ensure good scores on exams.
Such claims consist as they focus on one part of the subject. That alone would be idiotic but they also have the audacity to also claim that they cause stress to the students and teachers. In the first-place test, do sometimes cause stress however there are ways to prevent test anxiety and why stress at a young age can prepare them for the future, In the article called “Are We Stressing Out Our Kids?” they have stated “Driving children from one activity to another, day after day, while cramming homework into whatever time is left over, teaches children to over schedule themselves. On the other hand, if parents have personal goals for themselves — that they can realistically achieve — are comfortable with their own stress levels, and know how to relax, then their children will grow up learning to do the same. ” this and “It’s impossible to live in a stress-free world,” says Pope. “A little bit of butterflies before a test may improve performance. Our definition of bad stress is that a student feels the situation is impossible or [they] feels [they are] not able to meet the demands upon [them]”. The information was trying to say that stress is natural but it is up to the parents and child to find a middle ground. It also improves performances for you are on guard and attentive to the problems at hand which in turn causes you to get a better test result. The claim of the tests being a limiting agent of children's education is absurd. An article that has a balanced judgment offer “Focusing on content and skills, standardized testing can eliminate a waste of time in doing activities that do not produce learning gains and motivate students to excel. As stated by the Department of Education, “If teachers cover subject matter required by the standards and teach it well, then students will master the material on which they will be tested–and probably much more.” [12 Primary Pros and Cons of
Based on the Programme for International Student Assessment’s 2012 results (PISA), the United States has ranked 30th in comparison to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) participating countries. The United States, a country that has once held the ideal for educational standards, has now ranked just slightly above other countries that are just being developed. By using high-stakes test statistics to drive America’s educational standards, classrooms are beginning to lose their meaning of helping students to learn and grow as individuals. Because of classrooms just teaching the test are beginning to lose the meaning of helping students to learn and grow as individuals, results of high stakes testing which can be affected by the minutest details, are not a reasonable way to judge overall student competency; a better alternative would be by performance based assessments. “Test developers are obliged to create a series of one-size-fits-all assessments. But, as most of us know from attempting to wear one-size-fits-all garments, sometimes one size really can’t fit all.” (Popham, James W.). High stakes tests are not a reasonable way to judge overall student competency because educators can not expect to have accurate and precise results in just one sitting for 12 years of learning. Although tests pose an important role in education, they should not be given such high stakes of determining if a student should be rejected from a college “based solely on the fact that their score wasn’t high enough” (Stake, Robert.).
For many years, school systems and parents all over America have been asking- does high school testing measure a student’s knowledge fairly, accurately, and do they benefit the student. The tests do not accurately measure a student’s true academic ability. Furthermore, testing does not always fairly measure a student’s knowledge. High-stakes testing only adds stress to a student’s life. Studies have proven that testing is not beneficial to a student’s educational growth. Testing in high school is affected by different factors; therefore results can be unreliable and not beneficial to the growth of students.