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Get rid of standardized tests
Standardized tests proposal
Get rid of standardized tests
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Question #1 – Education is currently experiencing a major student achievement initiative to reform curricula by remedying the discrepancy between the curricula guide, the instructional plan, and the variety of assessment measures. Why are multiple measures needed to address the full depth and breadth of the expectations for student learning?
The current tool used to determine individual student ability, and the effectiveness of schools and school districts, consists of a singular measurement assessment process. Though relatively easy to administer and evaluate, this singular assessment in my opinion does not provide an accurate representation of student knowledge and more importantly ability. Many of the current means of assessment are comprised solely of multiple-choice questions utilizing a pencil and a bubble-sheet; a method that favors students who possess strong reading comprehension skills. While I believe that reading comprehension is an important skill, it is only one of several multiple intelligences that students use in learning. Therefore assessments and accountability need to be based on valid and reliable information from multiple data sources.
Multiple means of assessment requires more planning and long-term, ongoing measurement. When conducted properly, measuring student learning is essential in order to gain a true understanding of student ability. The use of multiple means of formative and summative assessments provides appropriate evidence of student learning that can be used to help modify instructional practice to better meet students’ individual learning needs. Some of the multiple means of assessment include student portfolios made up of work examples, letters from educators, pre-tests and post-tests, wri...
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...rthermore, their verbal and comprehensive skills may be well-developed from either natural abilities and/or early exposure to a multitude of resources. In this same classroom are students who have little or no vocabulary - written or spoken - and lack the typical 5-year-old skill set. Between these extremes lies a realm of differing abilities. It is here where the educational structure needs to intervene: by providing pull out differentiation in small groups with specialist teachers who can challenge the accelerated students and with others who can address the lacking skills of the students in need. This separation of students with differing abilities would be for only part of the day, with all students coming together for large group instruction in other subjects, therefore blending ability tracking and whole group instruction to best meet the needs of all students.
Even with material being taught incessantly, standardized tests can not accurately measure a student’s ability. The tests are “single-target—meaning that every student, no matter what level of achievement or ability, course selection, or cu...
Although there have been legitimate arguments supporting the benefits of standardized testing, such as their ability to successfully measure students’ proficiency, in recent years there have been concerns and disadvantages regarding how their misuse poses a serious threat to the American education system. Despite the belief that standardized tests should be used to measure students’ proficiency, there are more reasons outweighing this statement regarding why they shouldn’t be used for this purpose. Not only is this a particular issue with standardized testing, but the tests are becoming more high stakes and are being used unfairly to determine things such as graduation, or placement in a school, resulting in a significant amount of stress and anxiety in students. Testing corporations are also profiting from the design of these standardized tests, while standardized testing is also forcing teachers to all teach the same thing, leading to a lack of creativity in the students. Aside from these arguments, standardized tests have been found to be becoming flawed and have poor design.
The 1997-updated law under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) affected assessment techniques for students with disabilities. This law requires students with disabilities participate in the general education curriculum to the extent possible. The recent trend towards inclusion has forced educators to develop ways to assess special needs students working in the general education classroom. Brain research tells us that students have different learning styles; therefore, we should have alternative grading methods to meet the needs of students with learning disabilities.
Today, in the United States, standardized tests are administered every year by states to their Kindergarten-12th grade public school students. Different states place different weight on their standardized testing results where some states differ their funding based on results and annual improvement, whereas other states allow schools to simply gauge where their students are scoring relative to other schools in the state. These tests, however, are only standardized within one state. One of the few tests standardized throughout the entire country is the SAT, the Scholastic Aptitude Test, administered by College Board and required by, “More than 800 of the nation’s colleges and universities,” (Comras, 1984). This test will be the standardized test focused on in this paper. While standardized testing is that, standardized, and enables the comparison of one student to another, the meaning of the score does not equate to a test of intelligence. Therefore, while standardized testing should be applied in the education system, it needs to be more indicative of the material learned in school and should hold less weight than it currently does in the college admissions process.
The fourth resource in the category of formative assessment was a book written by Connie Moss and Susan M. Brookhart titled, Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom published in 2009. This text focused specifically on classroom lead practices aimed at building strategies to improve the formative assessment process. Like many other collected sources, this book stresses the idea that formative assessment improves student achievement and raises teacher quality as well. Besides explaining the formative assessment
Almost state has gained federal funding from accumulating the test data from all of their schools (Ravitch 107). Data collected from multiple choice questions determines the intelligence of every student and their teachers. The test data is tracked throughout their lifetime in relation to their test scores, graduation dates and other statistics companies such as Amazon and Microsoft use to evaluate different groups (by age, ethnicity, etc) as a whole (Ravitch 107). Ravitch claims there are many problems with this, mainly, tests do not measure character, spirit, heart, soul, and potential (112). Not everyone is the same, and just because one may be weak in math or writing doesn’t mean they’re not smart, resourceful individuals with much to share with the world. For schools to be even seen with a slight amount more than just their test scores, they have to be in great standings with their students’ average test results. The government’s intense focus on test results hurts schools’ ability to be a well-rounded school immensely. In contrast to federal’s pinpoint focus on what students learn, educated consumers desire their kids to have a full, balanced, and rich curriculum (Ravitch 108). Schools need to be more than housing for test-takers. The Education Board may claim students’ proficiency in their testing makes them better people, prepares them for college, and ultimately, the workforce. What they are
This paper explores a few of the many alternatives to standardized testing within the education system. Also, this research helps the reader understand what standardized exams are, why they are used, and how educators can use other ways of assessing to “test” the children’s/students’ abilities throughout the year. Some of these substitutions may include personal portfolios, developmental benchmarks, and a variety of analyses on comprehension by recording different sessions. Furthermore, this exposition uses research from many different resources to support the importance, credibility, and objectivity of other assessment tools besides standardized test. By reading this composition, one will learn the pros and cons of uniform evaluation implementations and why it is important for everyone’s individual learning and development that standardized testing are no longer required.
Next, additional information such as alternative assessments, state and district assessments, teacher-made tests, and other standardized assessments must be reviewed to determine the student’s present levels of academic perf...
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 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.
Willis, S. "On the Cutting Edge of Assessment: Testing What Students Can Do with Knowledge." Education Update: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development 38, no. 4 (June 1996): 4-7.
Assessment is defined as “an exercise—such as a written test, portfolio, or experiment—that seeks to measure a student's skills or knowledge in a subject area” (edweek.com). Mainly today, we rely on multiple-choice exams, or tests that are easy to grade in a very generalized manner. The focus is mainly on math and reading, and requires remembering an assortment of different facts. Alternatives to these testing norms are often called alternative assessment. Alternative assessment is defined as “any form of measuring what students know and are able to do other than traditional standardized tests. Alternative forms of assessment include portfolios, performance-based assessments, and other means of testing students.” Performance-based assessment “requires students to perform hands-on tasks, such as writing an essay or conducting a science experiment. Such assessments are becoming increasingly common as alternatives to multiple-choice, machine-scored tests. Also known as authentic assessment.” This seems like an incredibly promising form of assessing an individual student, yet it remains less used because it is more involved. A portfolio is “a systematic and organized collection of a student's work throughout a course or class year. It measures the student's knowledge and skills and often includes some form of self-reflection by the student.” This is also used in many situations, but again, based on personal experience at many schools, the portfolios seem to have little influence on monitoring a students academic success. Measuring the performance of a student should be a completely holistic effort, and should be intensive. It may require a lot of work for the teacher, and qualifications would be ...
There is so much research out there on formative assessment. Unfortunately, there is not a great deal of empirical evidence that can directly such as the use of many suggest forms of formative assessment to gains on summative assessments (Dunn & Mulvenon, 2009).
Performance assessment is an all-encompassing term used to include products and procedures such as portfolios, projects and experiments (Johnson, R., Penny, J. A., & Gordon, B, 2009). The portfolio is one type of performance assessment which is employed to establish the student’s achievement of learning in practice (Popham, 2005). A portfolio is a meaningful collection of student work that recounts the story of student achievement or development. Performance assessment determines students’ skills based on authentic tasks, that require students to show that they can perform. This is an approach to teaching and learning that values application rather than rote memorization. Performance assessment requires students
Assessment refers to what students can or cannot do and this ability is measured against a set of learning objectives that have been proposed in the course design (Gronlund, 1981). For example, a diagnostic test which is a performance based test on an extended sample of writing (McNamara, 2000) can be used to have clear picture of students’ writing ability both grammatical and discoursal. Similarly, achievement tests in formative and summative formats are used to measure the learning progress that has been made to date. Achievement tests are linked with the process of teaching and support the teaching to which they relate (McN...