Exams are suppose to be one of the most important things in your school life, teachers are always saying ‘all this work is for you to get good exam grades’ but actually your checked for your exam grades you need at least a C to get into a college in every subject a C is really high for a lot of students. ‘The GCSE pass rate has risen every year since the exams were first sat in 1988. Between 2000 and 2009, the percentage of GCSEs awarded an A* to C increased by more than 10 percentage points .’ This is a part of a government Q&A about the exam it is going to change because the pass rate is higher but has no one thought that students just might be practising a bit more or revising in different way or just in general trying harder yes in most …show more content…
So much so that many pupils predicted to get grade C in core subjects may not now achieve it, they say. Exams regulator Ofqual says "standards will be maintained" despite changes. Pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be receiving their GCSE results this August. The Ofqual exam watchdog in England has already warned that GCSE English, maths and all science results are likely to "look different" with grades possibly dropping this year because of changes to the exams and the patterns of entry.’ This just shows how ridiculous exams are because the grade boundaries should be set in stone for that exam you shouldn’t be able to change them whenever teachers say it’s time for exams we all sigh because revision is hard and it’s hard to find out the right path of revision e.g. reading a revision guide or looking back through your work or making flashcards. We shouldn’t have to do exams all in 1 go at the end of the year, Exams should be after every topic or section and then if you don’t get a high enough grade for that topic you can re-sit they should be 30 minute exams so that it is not just in 1-2hr exam it would make sense to split it up into little sections it would mean less stress for everyone and more work for people to
Many students feel stressed out when having to take standardized testing. According to Kaplan, colleges are relying too much on the SAT and ACT. They are using a long test that becomes equally weighted to years of school. That seems to be a little lopsided. A student can do well through out all high school and then score badly on the SAT or ACT and ruin all of the hard work that the student put forward in order to acquire good grades. That can alter the students lives by making them have to...
Standardized tests have historically been used as measures of how students are compared with one another or how much of a particular curriculum they have learned throughout the semester or year. Consequently, standardized tests are being used to make major decisions about students, such as grade promotion or high school graduation, and higher education evaluation. Various numbers of students across America have had to repeat classes because of the way standardized tests are used to pass or fail students. Although the tests require students to retain information until the end of the semester, I believe it is wrong to allow just a single test to decide whether an entire semester’s work will be rewarded with the credits that may have been well-earned. Some standardized testing such as the SAT, are not fair to students who may come from a poor educational background and do not retain information as their fellow peers. Students are at a disadvantage if they have test taking anxiety, which is a condition that many students suffer from “a feeling someone might have in a situation where performance really counts or when the pressure's on to do well” (Test Anxiety). Standardized tests give a false pretense of objectivity and consequently of equal opportunity. However, "the only goal of standardized tests is the scoring, which is done by machine" (Facts on Standardized Tests and Assessment Alternatives). It is made clear that the purpose of testing is to provide information to be used in conjunction with, not in pl...
Standardized tests cover certain material, which gives teachers something specific to teach. This is helpful, in that it allows teachers to know exactly what to teach. It also sets up a goal for the teachers, which is to get the students to pass. However, this process leaves something to be desired. Because the test is so important to the future of the students, teachers, and school, helping students to pass test becomes the most important part of their schooling. This restricts the educators from teaching students about things that are more important. College is usually next step for students after high school so it would seem logical that high school prepares them for college, but teachers are so busy preparing students for the test that they are not preparing them for the future. Consequently, students arrive at college ill-prepared, with shallow educations (Gitlin).
higher than previously assigned for given levels of achievement.” This means that grades are designed to recognize various levels of success, making them an important aspect of the education system in countries across the globe. They help determine not only where students are accepted, but help students earn scholarship dollars to aid students in paying for their education. However, there has been a rapid increase in the amount of A’s awarded to students in America to help those trying to get into and pay for college rather than earning A’s for the content of their work. There is a huge difference between the number of A’s given to students in America and
“Students are taking between ten and twenty standardized tests, depending on the grade. A total average of one hundred thirteen different ones by graduation.”(Locker) A few years ago the United States, along with other nations, was given a test to assess the academic strengths and weaknesses of each nation and rank them accordingly. When the results were released and the United States was ranked near the bottom, it was decided to start incorporating more testing through school. Between benchmark, TLI, PARCC, and common core standards, teaching technique was forced to change. Standardized testing has had a negative effect on teachers and students, implementing inadequate grading standards and the common core curriculum, such testing has made
Giving frequent exams in place of midterm exams would just overrule the point of having a midterm, which is able to see where the student is and how well a student is doing half way through the
The argument on the debate on whether or not the academic grading system is fair or not, isn’t something that is discussed too often. We have come to accept that the current grading system is the norm and that it is something that is unchangeable. To question the fairness of grading in this debate, isn’t on how it was adopted, but rather on how much of a student’s progress is up for interpretation. With varying opinions from Professors, it makes it difficult to set a standard of work across the board. The need for a grading system is understandable, even necessary to be able to mark the performance of students, especially in higher education. A student’s knowledge is pivotal in obtaining employment and becoming
students grades. The goals for all student learning should be on the same level but seems
Baker, M (2010) Are Exams Really Getting Easier? [Internet], UK, BBC. Available from: [Accessed 2nd January 2012]
On average, students were found to have improved by less than one half of a standard deviation on the test. Even worse, one-third of students only improved by less
Thus for standardized testing to be legitimate, that statement must be true, otherwise standardized testing would be a very expensive and pointless test. In a study conducted by William Hiss, he sampled 33 universities and over 123,000 students and concluded that SAT scores are a poor predictor of college performance which he defines as college culminated GPA over the years. By plotting a scatterplot that compares college GPA with SAT scores, he found no reliable correlation between SAT scores and college GPA. In fact, studies undertaken by the College Board indicate that the SAT adds only modestly to the prediction of student’s success. Interestingly, Hiss found out that high school GPA is the best predictor of college GPA. According to Hiss, “kids who had low or modest test scores, but good high school grades, did better in college than those with good scores but modest grades.” (Hiss) Hiss elaborated on this saying “a pattern of hard work, discipline and curiosity in high school shows up ‘as highly predictive, in contrast to what they do in three or four hours on a particular Saturday morning in a testing room.’”(Hiss) Looking at high school grades shows much more information that just how well the student did in a particular class. It shows whether the students were challenging themselves with advance placement class and
It is a fact that some people are better at taking tests than other people. Intelligent students who challenge themselves throughout their high school careers and have high grade point averages can do poorly on a test, while a student who has only taken basic level classes can score significantly higher. Is that a fair representation of what was achieved in high school?... ... middle of paper ...
For anyone who has ever gotten and F and cares about their grades can put a huge deal of stress on them. With an F hanging over there shoulders it can lower there self esteem so much to them thinking that they will never get the concept or are plain out just not intelligent. Some teachers don't like to see there students fail and will go to an extreme of curving or altering grades so they don't have to deal with it and will just pass the student. Is this in fact a way to make our education system better or lead to illiteracy in the world? In the article “What Our Education System Needs Is More F’s by Carl Singleton he states the idea that allowing any student to pass when they are not ready is a heavy factor on why incoming college students are illiterate.
Standardized tests have been a scourge of student life in America for more than fifty years. Throughout the United States, high school students prepare for months for the day in which they have to take out their No. 2 pencils, to endure four everlasting hours of bubbling-in answers. The ACT, American College Testing, and its counterpart, the SAT, Scholastic Assessment Test, are known as the high school exit exams, in which they have become one of the largest determining factors in the college-admissions process. Both standardized tests judge a student 's performance, in which it measures how well students learned skills to meet state standards. Although standardized tests are meant to measure what one learns in high school in order to determine
One of the biggest, if not the biggest, challenges you face going through school is the standardized tests you must take at the end of the year, every year, starting in third grade. You must pass these tests in order to move on to the next grade, or you keep taking them until you pass. A big question many people ask is how are these tests beneficial to real life education? The students, the teachers, the principal and the school districts are all judged based on the average scores on these tests. So, if you put that into perspective, our schools are being judged based on test results when the tests themselves are not ideal education.