What's the problem with standardized testing if the teachers have to teach the subjects that are being tested anyway? Good question. Let me get right down to answering it:
1) The standards are not uniform across the nation as each state, school district ,and (in some cases) individual schools have different standards. There is not really "a standard" for students to live up to. There are several and they cover a very wide spectrum.
2) The standards that do exist are rarely set by educators. Look at the professional demographic of your local school board. How many are/were educators? If it's anything like the communities I've lived in, not many. Look at who is formulating the curriculum; not educators, but the very companies that provide the stadardized tests to the schools! These companies have a monopoly on our children's education. Most of these companies develop and provide the curriculum, testing supplies and they even grade the tests! (For a great discussion regarding the privatization of the education system, see Mike's blog on the right sidebar.) No Child Left Behind was not written by educators; it was written by policy-wonks in Washington. Educators have been pushed out of the business side of education by lobbyists and the almighty $$$$!!
3) Standardized tests only cover certain subjects, particularly math, language arts and science. Thousands of students graduate each year without the basic knowledge of how our government works and basic geography (as civics and government classes are often dropped to allow more concentrated and remedial classes that cover the testing subject matter). These students don't know the basic functioning of the same system that seems to "know" what standards students should be assessed by.
4) No child can be assessed through a Scan-tron test. Children are not drones for teachers to fill with facts, like walking encyclopedias. They are artistic and musical. They love to sing and dance. They need enrichment and guidance. When standardized testing begins to replace artistic freedom for children, (as teaching to the test eats up more and more classroom instruction time, money is mismanaged, and art, music, band and choir are down-sized) our nation has taken a terribly wrong turn.
5) Assessment should include standardized testing, as a small portion of the total assessment. Students should be assessed on their progress throughout the school year. If, for example, a student enters 3rd grade at a 1st grade reading level and is reading at a 2.5 grade level at the end of the year, that's progress. (Now, I know this is a simplistic example, but I think you get the point.) Yet, depending on how well this same student fared on the standardized test, he/she may be labeled a failure and sent back down to remedial instruction. Student's should be assessed based on their portfolio of work--writing, comprehension, math, science, social studies and history skills--all of it laid out for teachers to determine where more instruction is needed. Standardized testing should be used to give teachers some guidance to their students overall progress, but only when used in conjunction with whole-student consideration.
I will leave the discussion here, for now, with my "Top 5"...
Our Choice
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A couple months ago amidst the economic turmoil there was a proposed
stimulus package from President Barak Obama and in this package Education
would be rec...
17 years ago
Wow, I've bee reading the posts over the last few weeks and as a mother of 2 small children who will be in school in the next few years this whole topic scares me. I think standardized tests are definitely a poor measure of the quality of education my child is receiving but I do not see how we can get away from them. I can not imagine the resources it would take to measure each classroom and each student individually. I know very little about how are education system works, but I do know that a huge part of the budget goes to administration rather than the classroom, and in reading the posts it sounds like standardized tests only perpetuate that problem.
ReplyDeleteBy cutting out many of the standardized tests involved in student assessment, administrative costs would be cut as well. Some school districts place the grading and compyling of testing results under the umbrella of administrative costs.
ReplyDeleteI realize that we will never be rid of standardized testing. When applied properly to the assessment of students, they are a valuable tool. However, they are currently being used as the ONLY tool in many classrooms around the county. They are used to evaluate teacher performance, and school and district performance. School performance ratings are directly tied to the amount of federal dollars a school receives; a lower score can mean less money for schools--the same schools which are struggling to raise test scores of their students with alreasy depleted resources.
Standardized testing is one cog in the wheel of the education system in this country. Unfortunately, it is connected to many other cogs, and its broken.
I was recently driving past my local elementary school in Pedley, which is located in the Jurupa Unified School District, and saw a banner hung across the front of the school that read, “Proficiency ROCKS!” I burst out laughing. The sign was clearly hand- made, with paints and designs splattered all over it. It looked like one of the “class projects” our class did while attending that very same elementary school. Part of my initial reaction though, did not stem simply from the humor of the sign, but sadly from the contradiction of it. I also recently checked out the Jurupa Unified School District’s (JUSD) Accountability Report Card. At first glance it would appear that overall the school district was in pretty sound shape based upon the number of student-teacher ratio. The qualifications of the teachers were also above reproach. On an interesting side-note the report denoted two different types of qualifications for their teachers. One was the normal credentialing, but then there was a separate section that mentions the “core academic” programs at the school(s), and the breakdown of teachers that were “NCLB compliant” and those that were not. Apparently, simply being of the appropriate credential is not enough to greatly effect the performance of students though, on standardized testing. Here is what I mean...
ReplyDeleteDistrict State
Subject 2006-07 2007-08 2006-07 2007-08
English-Lang. Arts: 33% 36% 43% 46%
Mathematics: 34% 36% 40% 43%
Science: 28% 34% 38% 46%
History-S. Science: 25% 26% 33% 36%
These results are obviously staggering, especially when it is also explained that these percentages are based on Proficiency and Advanced Level in compliance with the state’s standards. This school, that proclaims it has 99% of its teachers at NCLB Compliance, also has an outlandishly low proficiency rating. Not one area of academics do they have even a 50%-- which is still an F! So what happens when the schools themselves are getting an F? Or what should happen? Is it the teacher’s fault for their poorly testing students? Is it the school’s fault for not giving teachers the materials they need in order to accomplish the state’s goals? Or is it beyond all of that and something different, that says the true problem is actually the SYSTEM itself. The complete hog tying of teachers and schools that prevent them from teaching material that will genuinely help their students succeed has never been more clear than through these alarming statistics. It is time we change our ways as a public. All of us will be effected by raising a generation of increasingly, unprepared children. We trust our schools with our children’s future, in furthering their academic learning. But more than even that, our children trust us with their future as well educated participants of society. Will we respond to these innocent people in dire need of our help?
References:
http://www.jusd.k12.ca.us/cnt/docs/ped0708.pdf