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Standardized testing is important to measure student achievement
Importance of standardized tests in schools
Importance of standardized tests in schools
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As a first year classroom teacher, I witness a range of inconsistencies with the testing data. As educators, we have persistent questions as why we do what we do. From classroom instructional strategies and assessments to positive behavior and classroom management; the more we reflect and question instructional decisions that are taking place within our classroom, school, and county.
The No Child Left Behind Act is a legislation that is a reality all over the nation. According to Spellings (2007), the NCLB Act recognizes what truly make a difference in providing quality education. It allows states to develop standards with the belief that all children can learn despite race ethnicity, gender, or socio-economic background. As a result of NCLB, states have developed assessments that attach specified regulations to schools and its’ students. Due to these regulations and expectations, counties have developed ways to assess students that are suppose to be an indicator of how well they will perform on the state assessments.
First, what is an assessment? An assessment is a large focus o...
Author Deborah Landry in her article “Teachers' (k-5) perceptions of student behaviors during standardized testing” written for the Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue in 2006 examines the effects of standardized testing on student behavior as perceived by their teachers. Landry works with sixty-three teachers in grades kindergarten through grade five from two northeastern school districts in Oklahoma and found teachers to have had perceived many changes in student behavior during standardized testing. These changes had a wide range of what was described by Landry as distressing results including which included such things as fear and a sense of helplessness by the students observed. Landry also found that not only had standardized testing affected students negatively by raising such things as anxiety levels but also discovered that it is also impacting the teachers themselves who are responsible for
Since the U.S. Congress passed the No Child Left Behind program, standardized testing has become the norm for American schools. Under this system, each child attending a school is required to take a standardized test at specific grade points to assess their level of comprehension. Parents, scholars and all stakeholders involved take part in constant discussions over its effectiveness in evaluating students’ comprehension, teachers’ competency and the effects of the test on the education system. Though these tests were put in place to create equality, experts note that they have created more inequality in the classroom. In efforts to explore this issue further, this essay reviews two articles on standardized testing. This essay reviews the sentiments of the authors and their insight into standardized examination. The articles provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate that standardized tests are not effective at measuring a teacher’s competency because they do not take into account the school environment and its effect on the students.
Most controversies over education are centered around the question of how strictly standards should be upheld. The concern over whether or not flunking students is appropriate or even in the best interest of the student is a widely discussed topic. The argument often begins with students just starting school where the question of standardized testing for kindergartners arises. The majority of people are actually against such testing because they feel that a child who is labeled as a failure at such an early age may be permanently damaged (Bowen 86). The worry over the failure issue is further traced to educators who feel children just entering school are not fully prepared. Teachers are faced with kindergarten students who do not know their addresses, colors, and sometimes even first and last names (An ‘F’ 59).
Three years after the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) moved into our schools there is a great deal of controversy that questions whether the act implemented by President George W. Bush is helping or hurting an already suffering school system. There are many dimensions of the NCLB act that have been questioned over the past three years; the fair assessment of students with disabilities is one of them. As the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (NCFOT) reported, the public relations aspect of this act is strong.
The district is now making all teachers use an assessment tool called iReady. It is a website that assesses students in math and reading. They are first tested on a kindergarten through fifth grade range to find out what they know. Then the program takes that score and determines the right level for the child and they are tested again on the level. Once all students have been assessed the program orders the students from highest to lowest and by average grade level skill they are on: early second grade, middle second grade, late second grade or any other grade. The teacher uses those scores to create her reading groups, math groups and the students she will give extra assistance to. They haven’t officially established how many times and when they will do this iReady assessment but for now they are doing it once a week for forty five minutes. The test also flags if they spent too long or too little time on a question. The ones that spent less than 15 seconds per problem are to go back and do the assessment again.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is currently the educational policy in the United States. Prior to NCLB the educational policies in effect were “A Nation at Risk, in 1987 America 2000, and a few years later with Goals 2000” (Eisner, 2001, p.21). No Child Left Behind is a test based accountability system used in schools to measure their performance holding the districts, administrators and teachers liable and accountable for the outcomes. Supovitz (2009) States that No Child Left Behind was a major reform initiative intended to bring about widespread improvements in student performance and reduce inequities between ethnic groups and other traditionally under-served populations like economically disadvantaged students, students from major racial
At a time of wide public concern about the state of education, the legislation sets in place requirements that reach into virtually every public school in America. The law emphasizes accountability, teacher quality, parent choice, improved teaching methods, and flexibility. (Correa) Strict requirements and deadlines have been set for states to expand the scope and frequency of student testing, revamp their accountability system and guarantee that every classroom is staffed by a ?highly qualified? teacher in his or her own subject area. (I ed) The plan also mandates annual student testing in reading and math by 2005, and requires all school districts to allow students in consistently low-performing schools to transfer to higher performing schools, at the districts expense. (Hull) From year to year, states are required to improve the quality of their schools. No Child Left Behind has expanded the federal ...
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.
The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the No Child Left Behind Act, and how the accountability of testing subgroup provisions may play a major role on the responsibilities of a student’ education. The paper also focuses on what information parents are receiving to actually know how their student(s) are performing in class and whether each student’s performance is within state compliance with NCLB.
As students in a Structure & Philosophy class, one of the main components has been to introduce and familiarize us with the No Child Left Behind Act. President Bush passed this legislation on January 8, 2002. The NCLB Act was designed to ensure each and every student the right to a fair education, to give parents more options in their child’s education, and to guarantee all teachers are highly qualified. By highly qualified, the act means teachers must have at least a bachelor’s degree, have full state certification or licensure, and have demonstrated competence in their subject areas (US Dept. of Education).
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.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) deals with student achievement standards by holding schools accountable for the achievement of their students (Implementation 11). The NCLBA uses standardized tests to chart the success of students. If students are not meeting standards, the school is required to offer tutoring, which is funded by the state with Title I, the education mandate passed in which granted all public schools access to federal grants, money (No Subject 7). The Act itself is not the problem; the problem is that the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standard which is a big part of the NCLBA is not being met. The AYP standard is not being met because schools are not changing their methods quickly enough. It was said in the NCLBA that schools nationwide were to have 100% proficiency of the AYP standard within 12 years (Implementation 9). Since the passing of the NCLBA in 2001, most public schools, nationwide have not improved at all.
The state’s new evaluation system was in response to administrators who produced, “superficial and capricious teacher evaluation systems that often don't even directly address the quality of instruction, much less measure students' learning” (Toch, 2008). Too often, the “good-ol-boy” attitude would insure mediocre educators would remain employed. Realizing this was often more the rule then the exception, the governor created educational mandates to focus, “on supporting and training effective teachers to drive student achievement” (Marzano Center, 2013). Initially, they expected the school districts and the teachers would have issues and experience growing pains, but in the end the goal was, “to improve teacher performance, year by year, with a corresponding rise in student achievement” (Marzano Center, 2013).
Washington, DC: National Center for Teacher Quality. Hinchey, P. H., & University of Colorado at Boulder, N. (2010). Getting teacher assessment right: What policymakers can learn from research. National Education Policy Center. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.com.
As teachers, we have to monitor the progress our students make each day, week, quarter and year. Classroom assessments are one of the most crucial educational tools for teachers. When assessments are properly developed and interpreted, they can help teachers better understand their students learning progress and needs, by providing the resources to collect evidence that indicates what information their students know and what skills they can perform. Assessments help teachers to not only identify and monitor learners’ strengths, weaknesses, learning and progress but also help them to better plan and conduct instruction. For these reasons, ongoing classroom assessment is the glue that binds teaching and learning together and allows educators to monitor their efficacy and student learning.