Bagnato (1980) provides five suggestions for organizing test write-ups, which can be very beneficial for the individuals who are reading the report. These individuals typically include parents and teachers (Overton, 2015). The first suggestion that Bagnato provides is to organize “test results by domains or by developmental levels rather than by instruments” (Overton, 2015, p. 295). In other words, Bagnato is suggesting that write-ups be presented in a format that allows individuals to see how the student performed in each related category, rather than how the student did on a series of test. For example, reading comprehension and math would be looked at separately, which allows individuals to see where the student is weak and where the student
In the article, “Understanding Writing Assignments: Tips and Techniques,” author Dan Melzer shares with his audience seven useful suggestions to keep in mind when starting any writing assignment. Melzer’s first tips are for readers to examine their rubrics for any key verbs that will tell writers what approach and genre their paper should have. Knowing what kind of writing your teacher wants will not only help a writer get started, it will also inform a writer what they can research to view examples. Next, he tells his readers to write for their specific audience, to make sure they know their teacher’s expectations, and to take into account what they have learned in class. In these sections, Melzer stresses the importance of asking a teacher
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
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...
Some students simply do not test well, others try their hardest and still cannot reach the impracticable standards set for them. The individuals who create these tests do not understand the pressures of being a student, or the struggle to answer thirty-five questions in a compressed time period. One test cannot accurately measure the intelligence of a student.
Americans overwhelmingly think there is too much emphasis on standardized testing in public schools and that test scores are not the best way to judge schools, teachers or students, according to a national poll.
Current educational policy and practice asserts that increased standardized student testing is the key to improving student learning and is the most appropriate means for holding individual schools and teachers accountable for student learning. Instead, it has become a tool solely for summarizing what students have learned and for ranking students and schools. The problem is standardized tests cannot provide the information about student achievement that teachers and students need day-to-day. Classroom assessment can provide this kind of information.
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.
For the PDSA cycle I am going to use individual journal entries because they are engaging and interactive to every student, and they are a great tool in reflecting on what each student has learned in the lesson. “Student-centered assessments must be engaging and interactive, while incorporating sharing, trusting, team building, reflecting, helping and coaching.”(Pitas, 2000) The students will be given the freedom to write anything that is on their mind and the students will answer three questions that will help generate well thought out answers. The students will write at the very least a paragraph for each day they are learning a lesson.
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...
The goal of education is to provide children with the opportunity to amass a wealth of knowledge, love for learning, and academic strength. Children go to school to read, write, and learn a variety of subjects. While education is meant to be exciting for children, there have to be standards in order to make sure that progress is being and those children are where they need to be in order to move onto the next phase of their education. Education builds as it grows, and students need a strong foundation in order to succeed and continue. Without those strong building blocks, students will continue to fall back and repeat the same material again and again. And so, testing and assessment come into play to make sure children are where they need to be. However, in early childhood settings testing is almost non-existent because of the stigma around testing. The current debate in our education system argues that testing is not a good measure of a child’s actual knowledge. Rather, assessment gives teachers a better picture of a student’s abilities and capabilities in the classroom. Thus, currently the debate continues over assessment versus testing in the classroom due to the demand for knowledge on whether or not testing is a good way of measuring a student’s progress in school.
Regular use of formative assessment improves student learning as instruction can be adjusted based on students’ progress and teachers are able to modify instructions to cater to students’ individual needs (Black & Wiliam, 2010; Taylor-Cox, & Oberdorf, 2013). Various forms of informal and formal formative assessment methods are conducted as learning takes place, continuously through teacher observations, questioning through individual interactions, group discussions and open-ended tasks (McMillan, 2011). tests can tell us a lot about students and be used to inform and guide teaching, rather than simply to determine grades. Teachers can learn a lot from test results if they analyse the data generated to inform their teaching and learning programs (Perso, 2009). However, high stakes tests may result in students becoming stressed, leading to misreading questions, careless working and incomplete answers (Booker et al., 2010).
Standardized Achievement tests are often administered to give a perspective on how well students perform, however, most educators fail to understand that they are only limited to a certain r...
Learning Theories and Instructional Strategies The lessons contained in this unit of instruction were based upon Madeline Hunter’s Seven Steps of Lesson Plan Formatting. This lesson plan format is a proven effective means for delivering instruction. When designing lessons, the teacher needs to consider these seven elements in a certain order since each element is derived from and has a relationship to previous elements. It should be noted that a lesson plan does not equal one class period.
When testing a child, make sure that the testing method used is appropriate for that child. For example, if giving a test that relies on visual aids to administer the test, it is important that the teacher is certain that all the children have good enough vision to clearly see the aids. When assessing young children in particular, it is important to look for more than simply right or wrong. An in-depth look is necessary to see what the children really know before giving them a poor grade. Children’s work needs to be critiqued in more than one way to be sure that they really do or don‘t understand.... ...
The teacher will also make norm-referenced and criterion referenced interpretations of assessment through this website. They have graph and color-coded bands that show widely held expectations for children’s development and learning. The teacher will use this website and graph to communicate twice a year with the parents about the child’s strength, weakness or any area of