Standardized Testing: A Qualitative Study

1416 Words3 Pages

The overall purpose of schooling is to advance one’s knowledge and skill base and through standardized testing the belief is that one’s knowledge and skill base can be assessed and analyzed, but what occurs many a times is a teacher's difficulty to expand upon the learning process due to the confinements that testing has on his/hers ability to teach. In a qualitative study performed by the Morehead State University it was determined that in a particular rural school standardized testing had implemented a limit on the amount of time that teachers were able to instruct, as well as limitations on the “instructional resources and the types of assessments teachers employed” (Thomas, 2005). Even if a teacher was content with teaching the state …show more content…

Teachers who lack passion and desire to teach what they are given can translate and manifest its way to students as they also lose aspirations to come to school and learn only what will be on exams they are supposed to take to show that they are “learning.” Students come to school to learn things they did not know prior and with the acquisition of knowledge it can many a times create a drive for students to expand upon a particular subject, which can ultimately determine their careers and goals, but this whole process is shutdown with standardized tests, as many topics and subjects are limited to a few basic ones that put out the fire students are expected to have.

Validity of Tests
Even though standardized tests have been seen to cause emotional distress in many students and has dramatically …show more content…

It has been seen that factors like one’s economic and racial background can heavily influence one’s performance on a tests, as they are not given the same opportunities as those given to more affluent students. A student’s emotional well-being is also at stake as many students come out of tests doubting their overall intelligence, even though they were quite confident in the material and so much is hinged on test scores that it places a great deal of pressure on students to do well. Standardized tests also restrict teacher’s ability to learn due to the restrictions that standardized test place on the material being taught, which makes it very hard for teachers to go beyond the required and teach more interesting things. Due to the issues that have arisen from standardized tests many alternative solutions have been used and have been proven to be successful. Some good alternative solutions have been limiting the amount of standardized tests given by sampling a few students, shortening the length of exams, and allotting more time to complete these tests. Other alternatives look to more qualitative approaches in learning by implementing things like projects and portfolios that give an excellent insight to a student’s performance and

Open Document