brittany biggie's List: Standardized Testing

• Is it fair to students when major decisions -- affecting not only their education but in some cases, their future -- are based on the results of a single test?

• As Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn.,
• Far from improving education, high-stakes testing marks a   major retreat from fairness, from accuracy, from quality, and from   equity."
• The tests may be biased.  
• Moreover, when poorer schools do manage to scrape together the money to   buy these materials, it's often at the expense of books and other   educational resources that they really need.
•     Standardized tests tend to measure the temporary acquisition of facts   and skills, including the skill of test-taking itself, more than genuine   understanding.
• Skills-based instruction, the type to which most   children of color are subjected, tends to foster low-level uniformity and   subvert academic potential," as Dorothy Strickland, an African-American   professor at Rutgers University, has remarked.
• When rewards   and punishments are applied to educators, those who teach low-scoring   populations are the most likely to be branded as failures and may decide   to leave the profession.

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• • A test score does not determine anything but how well they did then and there or that test.
• the complexity of their child cannot be captured   by a test score.
• The challenge   is to match assessment that is integrated into classroom instruction
• with assessment   that provides school- and district-wide information being demanded
• that assessment should serve one primary purpose:   to improve student learning.
• but to provide information to   help the student learn better.

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• 

  • Haha- but it's the truth.

• But the current demand for Tougher Standards   carries with it a bundle of assumptions about the proper role of   schools, the nature and causes of failure, and the way students   learn.
• This response plays well with the public,   but is based on an exaggeration of the problem, a misanalysis of its   causes, and a simplistic prescription that frequently ends up doing   more harm than good.
• Left out almost entirely is the point of view of the students   themselves, and the impact on their learning.
• The Tougher Standards   movement is fatally flawed in five separate ways.
• The assumption that achievement is all that   counts overlooks a substantial body of psychological research   suggesting that a focus on how well one is doing is very different   from a focus on WHAT one is doing.
• Moreover, a preoccupation with   performance often undermines interest in learning, quality of   learning, and a desire to be challenged.
• long lists of specific facts
• ever was a time when it   worked all that well.
• All the limits of, and problems with, such testing amount to a   serious indictment of the version of school reform that relies on   these tests.
• the idea that if something isn't working very well -- say,   requiring students to do homework of dubious value -- then insisting   on more of the same will surely solve the problem.

  • definitely not true- it just makes the situation worse

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