Do Grades Accurately Measure A Students’ Achievement?

Standardized testing was once a good idea, to test the students’ capabilities and to see how they compare with other districts, but teachers teach using different methods and focus on different issues. What they think is important may not be what other teachers feel is important or what the state thinks is important. So, as a student you learn more about what the teacher deems important, but are evaluated on by what the state thinks is important. Standardized tests are not a reliable way to evaluate someone’s intelligence. This brings us back to what the students were taught in class and how it has been assimilated.

A bad test result can ruin a students motive for education, and if this is done unnecessarily, this is a terrible thing. An unearned good result can leave a child who needs help to move on without understanding what they need to know. A common argument that advocators of standardized tes... ... middle of paper ... ...cceed. This can only be done when the right students are in the right classes. When you give the same standardized testing to kids that are on much different levels and are from many backgrounds, you get inaccurate information on the intelligence of the child and what they need to learn.

They can break down many different aspects of what students need to improve on and what they are already knowledgeable of. Students need to learn more than just the test information. Only studying and learning test material makes students less diverse and leads to boring lectures in the classroom. Another article written by an organization called Fairtest adds, “Some students simply do not test well. Many students are affected by test anxiety or do not show their learning well on a standardized test, resulting in inaccurately lower scores” (Fairtest).

Studies have proven that testing is not beneficial to a student’s educational growth. Testing in high school is affected by different factors; therefore results can be unreliable and not beneficial to the growth of students. A well created test can measure learning and diagnose a student’s weakness (Merrow, 4). In testing, the idea is for the student to get the correct answer on information they know and incorrect answers on the information they do not. However, a testing error may occur.

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.

“The pressure on educators and policymakers to demonstrate accountability in schools has driven some to use the test results inappropriately (Holloway, 2001).” Standardized tests are comparisons of one student to another not of how well a teacher teaches or a student learns. Standardized tests should not have such high-stakes in assessing learning because that is not their intended purpose. In order to understand the purpose of these tests we must first examine what they are. According to W. James Popham(1999), “a standardized test is any examination that’s administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner”. Norm-Referenced tests and Criterion Referenced tests are two types of tests used to evaluate students.

The primary purpose of standardized tests is to evaluate students and show whether or not the standards of the standardized test was met in the school. However, the risks of these tests outweigh the benefits. A standardized test is not the sole test that determines the level of the student’s intelligence. Standardized tests place pressure on teachers to instruct a group of diverse students who are all on different academic levels. When students score poorly on standardized tests, school districts are coerced to lose federal education f... ... middle of paper ... ...ngle test that does not even measure the entirety of a student’s intelligence.

If a student is told in the form of grades throughout their life that they are an “A” or “B” student, when in reality these scores are earned from attendance and homework completion, not actual retained knowledge, then this student may not be able to identify they have areas of weakness (Quinn, 2013). This could greatly affect a student in the future because they do not know their complete learning profile. Comparatively, if a student consistently earns “Ds” due to poor behavior and participation, yet aces the unit ... ... middle of paper ... ...to authentically assess their work and truly focus on grading what students learn, not all the extraneous elements that can be include in a grade such as effort, participation, attendance and behavior. An honest reflection of student learning can still look very different pending if a teacher is using more traditional or progressive grading practices. Traditional practices use a 0-100 point scale and average end of year grades, including zeros, between many categories including all assessments, effort, homework and even behavior (Hanover Research, 2013).

In either aspect because educational quality is being measured by the wrong yardstick, those evaluations are more likely to be an error. One of the chief reasons that students' test scores continue to be the most important factor in evaluating a school. Most educators do not really understand why a standardized test provides a misleading estimate of a school staff's effectiveness. The main point children go to school ... ... middle of paper ... ... Lu. "States reconsider Common Core tests."

Standardized tests typically measure a small amount of grade-level skills. Also, standardized tests stress factual information; thereby, forcing teachers to teach to the test. For example, they evaluate writing skills by asking grammar questions rather than having the students write a story. Since standardized tests, do not measure an individual student’s knowledge, the impact on students with exceptional needs can be harmful. This dissatisfaction has forced educators to look at different forms of assessment in order to provide information about student learning and achievement.