If a standardized test was a contestant on Dancing With the Stars or American Idol, would it be voted off? Depends on whether the judges were politicians, professors, psychologists or parents. The stakes are high; ideology and money are at stake, and accountability is on the line. Using standardized tests as quantitative measurement tools have important implications for American education, “quality of assessment is one of the key features of good teaching and setting appropriate assessment tasks should question students in a way that demands evidence of understanding” (Jimaa, 20011, p. 217). The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education reform program is a good example of this concept.
The ambitious federal education bill that President Bush signed into law in 2002, NCLB, required the federal government to use its spending power to prod school districts across the country to rely on scientific research to guide the teaching of reading. Was it a winner or not?
President Bush stated that “there isn’t any need to throw good money into programs that don’t work, that has already been done” (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/05/20040511-5.html). (At the time, Congress passed the act by an overwhelming majority.) However, the euphoria was short lived when the public education industry realized President Bush was serious about not rewarding failure. NCLB required state and local districts to prove that federally funded programs were based on solid scientific methods and actually worked. Bush said, “The findings of years of scientific research on reading are now available, and application of this research to the classroom is now possible for all schools in America,” (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/05/200405...
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Jimaa, S. (2011). The impact of assessment on students learning. Procedia – Social and
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Mora, R. (2011). “School is so boring”: high-stakes testing and boredom at an urban middle
school. PennGSE Perspectives on Urban Education, 9(1/11). Retrieved from http://www.urbanedjournal.org
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Working Paper WR-375-EDU). Santa Monica, CA: RAND.
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What the public didn’t hear as much about is how the No Child Left Behind Act has had outcomes that were not intended such as testing anxieties in students, schools having to lay off teachers because of lack of funds because they couldn’t meet qualifying standards, and schools not having funds to purchase textbooks and needed materials to educate the children. The testing that is required for the government to assess the schools and students are not standards for every state, each state has some control over what they test as long as they test the main subjects of Reading and Math. Another negative is the federal funding that was promised by the government was not as much as they promised. This caused the state and local governments to have to pick up expenses that they were not prepared for in order to bring school up to standard.
Neill, Monty. "The No Child Left Behind Act Is Not Improving Education." Education: Opposing Viewpoints. New York: Greenhaven, 2005. 162-68. Print.
Another major criticism of the “No Child Left Behind” deals with the implications of using a standardized test as means of assessing achievement.
Standardized tests have been used to see how much a child has learned over a certain period of time. These tests have been a highly debated issue with many parents and just people in general. In the article “Opting out of standardized tests? Wrong answer,” the author Michelle Rhee argues that people should not be trying to opt out of standardized tests because it allows the country to see how much a child has learned and the things they need to improve. On the other hand, in the article “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong,” the author Kristina Rizga argues that standardized tests are not an efficient way to measure a student’s intelligence.
While this report card focuses on how the NCLB act affects all subgroups in education, it is important to look at one group in particular; the special education students. President Bush?s NCLB act is forcing special education students to perform on statewide assessments that are above their intelligence level and are often requiring them to pass the assessments in order to receive a high school diploma. This often causes teachers, such as Lindley Corcoran, a special education teacher at Sheppard Pratt private school for students with severe disabilities, to teach to the test rather than teach practical functional skills which she believes will be ...
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is bringing down the American education system for the sake of academic competition with other countries that use better methods. This country hasn’t changed its methods in decades. By addressing different aspects of the problem, it can be solved more efficiently and quickly. Three different aspects will be addressed here: what the American education system already does, what other countries are doing (as well as cultural differences), and what we should be doing. What we should be doing is a general combination of what other successful countries are doing, taking advice from experienced educators, and abolishing stressful, unnecessary practices.
The NCLB Act was signed by former President George Bush in 2002, which was created to improve student and achievement gaps. In the article, “No Child Left behind and the Transformation of Federal Education Policy”, Patrick J. McGuinn exclaimed, “No Child Left behind is an attempt by the federal government to regulate educational policy in the 50 states” (Patrick McGuinn,2007, p. 370). It is also designed to make sure that all students can achieve high standards from all states which include students with disabilities. Before the NCLB was passed, students with disabilities were excluded from school assessments. Now that this act was ...
“Making the Grade,” which was published in the Salt Lake Tribune in September of this year, is an article arguing the negative sides of the No Child Left Behind Act. Through this article, a majority of the discussion regarded the budgeting involved with NCLB. This article calls No Child Left Behind a “one-size-fits-all formula for improving education in America” (Making the Grade). According to President Bush, the NCLB Act is “’the cornerstone’ of his administration” (Salt Lake Tribune). Like with any legislation, however, come both positive and negative sides.
U. S. Department of Education (n. d.). Overview: Making a difference: No child left behind. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/overview/importance/difference/index.html
Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. New York: Basic Books, 2010. Print.
Standardized testing is not the best way to measure how well a teacher teaches or how much a student has learned. Schools throughout the United States put their main focus on standardized tests; these examinations put too much pressure on the teachers and students and cause traumatizing events. Standardized testing puts strain on teachers and students causing unhealthy occurrences, Common Core is thrown at teachers with no teaching on how to teach the new way which dampers testing scores for all students, and the American College Test determines whether a child gets into college or not based on what they have learned during high school. Standardized tests are disagreeable; tests should not determine ranking of people.
As child growing up some of the frightful memories include a visit to the dentist; an evil man with scary drill whose solve purpose is to hurt you or the first day in elementary school you finally leave all behind the cozy classrooms and nap times of kindergarten and enter the big leagues. All of these are considered a cakewalk compared to standardize testing. Since the start of elementary school students in the United States are taught to test. In many instances students are held back or placed in remedial classes because of lower grades. But many don’t realize that some students are not great at testing taking and because of the lower grades some educators believe that these students are lower achievers. This leads to lower self-esteem and encourage students to drop out in later years. Also students are forced to memorize information merely as facts without sparking their creativity or enhancing their knowledge.
The NCLB Act is not effective because of the current situation of state governments calling certain schools “failures” because of their low exam scores, thereby reducing funding to the school. If the federal government is funding the NCLB Act for after school programs, it would seem that it was funding a non-effective program. I have broken down the consequences as follows.
Too much time is being devoted to preparing students for standardized tests. Parents should worry about what schools are sacrificing in order to focus on raising test scores. Schools across the country are cutting back on, or even eliminating programs in the arts, recess for young children, field trips, electives for high school students, class meetings, discussions about current events, the use of literature in the elementary grades, and entire subject areas such as science (if the tests cover only language arts and math) (Kohn Standardized Testing and Its Victims 1).
“If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn't be here. I guarantee you that.” This quote by Michelle Obama illustrates the idea that standardized testing should not have such a large influence on education in America. However, a majority of people are under the impression that standardized tests are an accurate method to measure a person's intellectual ability. I believe that standardized tests have developed into a very critical part of the American education system that is hindering the growth of students and teachers instead of providing a tool that can accurately measure knowledge.