Monday, March 16, 2020

Free Essays on Standardized Testing

Controversy involving education and national standardized testing has always sparked controversies. Does a simple test, which holds such a great deal of significance on a child’s future, sufficient enough? These tests are supposed to be a basis for what all students should know to continue their educations. Education has become a very important subject in political campaigns. With education among the electorate’s top priorities, the phrase â€Å"higher standards† has become ubiquitous in political campaigns across the country. (Gary Orfield). Many politicians have stressed that all children can learn at high levels, where many liberal and civil rights advocates are too concerned about lowering the standards for these tests. Unfortunately, this movement has all to frequently been reduced to a single policy: high stakes testing. (Orfield). These tests are responsible for grade promotion, jobs for graduate students, and even promotions for teachers. President Clinton recommended in his state of the Union address that all students are supplied with materials that help them with these tests. This caused some controversy because people believed that with these materials, it undermined teachers, discriminated against minorities, and affected the teacher student relationship. I agree that students should be able to receive manuals to increase their chances on these tests, but I also feel that if a student knows what is going to be on the test it can hinder his ability to truly learn in those areas. A type of test that has negative feedback is high-stakes tests. The implications of these arguments were serious enough to lead the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University to commission a series of studies on the educational and social impact of high-stakes testing. High-stakes tests attached to grade promotion and high school graduation lead to increased dropout rates. (Orfield). I think if too much emphasis is placed on specif... Free Essays on Standardized Testing Free Essays on Standardized Testing Standardized Testing: Are they Beneficial? Standardized testing is very common statewide for determining the students’ academic knowledge starting form K-12 grade. But what does these score tells us? Are they academically smart because they have high score? Or what if the student maintains good grades working hard in school but receive bad scores on these tests? There are many ambiguous answers to these questions. Standardized testing is bias based on minorities and financially separates the advantage student from higher-income families to score higher than lower income families. These testing also drive excellent teachers away from their profession. However, the question still remains: what does these results tell us how kids are learning? There is a great improvement of students with their scores but there is still a big barrier between minority student such as Latinos and blacks with white students. According to a journal in Student Test Scores, a Wider Gap, African-Americans score increased to 6 points in the SAT verbal and 7 points higher in math in the past 10 years. In comparison, white student’s score jumped 11 points for verbal and 18 points higher in math during the same time interval. This statistic shows that white high school seniors score much higher than any ethnic group than they did decades ago. This shows a large gap between the minorities. Part of the reason is due to cultural and language barrier that these students face. Referring to the journal Tests that Fail Democracy, minority students tend not to do as well â€Å"because they aren’t given the time they need to process information, write essays, and unravel foreign culture they are being asked to identify.† These con flicts lead the students to be discouraged to take these tests that lead a big rate of dropout for minorities. Texas has the rising â€Å"dropout rates especially among black and Hispanic students.† (Texas Law Limits Use of S... Free Essays on Standardized Testing Controversy involving education and national standardized testing has always sparked controversies. Does a simple test, which holds such a great deal of significance on a child’s future, sufficient enough? These tests are supposed to be a basis for what all students should know to continue their educations. Education has become a very important subject in political campaigns. With education among the electorate’s top priorities, the phrase â€Å"higher standards† has become ubiquitous in political campaigns across the country. (Gary Orfield). Many politicians have stressed that all children can learn at high levels, where many liberal and civil rights advocates are too concerned about lowering the standards for these tests. Unfortunately, this movement has all to frequently been reduced to a single policy: high stakes testing. (Orfield). These tests are responsible for grade promotion, jobs for graduate students, and even promotions for teachers. President Clinton recommended in his state of the Union address that all students are supplied with materials that help them with these tests. This caused some controversy because people believed that with these materials, it undermined teachers, discriminated against minorities, and affected the teacher student relationship. I agree that students should be able to receive manuals to increase their chances on these tests, but I also feel that if a student knows what is going to be on the test it can hinder his ability to truly learn in those areas. A type of test that has negative feedback is high-stakes tests. The implications of these arguments were serious enough to lead the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University to commission a series of studies on the educational and social impact of high-stakes testing. High-stakes tests attached to grade promotion and high school graduation lead to increased dropout rates. (Orfield). I think if too much emphasis is placed on specif... Free Essays on Standardized Testing In the article â€Å"The High-Stakes Testing...† Gary Orfield and Johanna Wald, both researchers at Harvard Graduate School, state that the policy of high-stakes testing was first conceived to help raise the educational standards but has only discriminated against high poverty and minority students. Public concern has caused political campaigns to discuss standardized testing policies in recent years. According to Orfield and Wald, public interest leaders feel that citizens want to hold the school systems accountable for the inequality of standardized tests, which are causing some educational advocates to show concern that some teachers will lower their standards so students scores will improve. Orfield and Wald suggest that the reform movement of high stakes testing has worsened the educational problem; that tests are unfair to minority students, â€Å"undermine teachers,† and refuse high school graduation to students who do not pass a one-shot test (1). Moreover, many teacher and principal’s salaries rely on standardized tests, which may have the effect of many high poverty schools wanting to hire uncertified and inexperienced teachers who teach test preparation. Also, Orfield and Wald point out that high stakes testing narrows the curriculum by teaching to the test. This is where teachers only educate the basic points of learning needed to pass a test instead of examining topics from different points of view over a period of time. Many students are taught how to pass the test, but do not comprehend the material. This way of teaching is seen mostly in high poverty schools where the population is made up of minority and poor students. Among the poverty-stricken students are mostly black males who are the ones that are â€Å"disproportionately represented† among those held back and denied a diploma (2). Furthermore, high-stakes testing causes an increase in dropout rates, especially among minorities. In fact, nine out of t... Free Essays on Standardized Testing Standardized testing â€Å"No issue in the U.S. Education is more controversial than (standardized) testing. Some people view it as the linchpin of serious reform and improvement, others as a menace to quality teaching and learning† (Phelps). A tool that educators use to learn about students and their learning capabilities is the standardized test. Standardized tests are designed to give a common measure of a student’s performance. Popular tests include the SAT, IQ tests, Regents Exams, and the ACT. â€Å"Three kinds of standardized tests are used frequently in schools: achievement, diagnostic, and aptitude† (Woolfolk 550). Achievement tests can be used to help a teacher assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses in a particular subject. Diagnostic tests are typically given to elementary school students when learning problems are suspected. Aptitude tests are designed to predict how a student will perform in the future. For example, the SAT predicts performance in the first year of college. Standardized tests give educators a standard measure or â€Å"yardstick† because such a large number of students across the country take the same test. These tests are used to tell how well school programs are doing or to give a picture of the skills and abilities of students. Standardized tests; however, are problematic at all ages and levels of schooling. Standardized aptitude tests measure students’ abilities to learn in school, how well they are likely to succeed in future education. Rather than measuring knowledge of subjects taught in school, these tests measure a broad range of abilities or skills that are considered important to succeed in school. The classroom setting and teacher are the key to assessment. â€Å"Pressure to produce higher scores leads teachers to focus on material that will be covered by the tests and to exclude everything else. The curriculum is thereby narrowed, which means that some subjects are ignored. Within thos...