As a teacher of 30 years, John Gatto had a first hand experience with the cruelty of standardized testing and the curriculum derived around it. What Gatto found was that teachers and students agreed on being bored, but blamed one another for the boredom. Students claimed the teachers were not interested in the subject nor knew much about the subject. Teachers claimed the students to be rude and uninterested. Both sides are a products of the 12 year school program’s conditioning creating an endless factory of childishness. Gatto states instead of creating a prison-like environment for students and teachers alike, we should encourage the best qualities of being young by being more [flexible] with time and tests. Thus creating more competent adults.…
being centered on raising a standardized test score: schools are putting too much emphasis on…
When going to school students are supposed to learn based off a curriculum, but instead they are learning based off a test. These test are meant to help students, but instead they are hurting them. Standardized test requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from common bank of questions, in the same way. Also they are scored in a “standard” or consistent manner, which makes it possible to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of students. Each state has a different name for their standardized test, for Virginia they call theirs the Standards Of Learning, SOL’s. These test are neither fair nor objective, puts pressure on the students, and it cuts off time in the school year.…
High-stakes standardized testing continues to be a controversial topic in the field of education. Parents dispute that the high-stakes Common Core aligned assessments place unnecessary stress onto their children and convert classrooms from learning environments to test prep institutions. Teacher unions have a tendency to support the Common Core standardized curriculum, however, they disagree with required high-stakes assessments, particularly when they are utilized to assess educators (Singer, 2015).…
One might argue that physicians, lawyers, real-estate brokers and pilots all take high stakes standardized tests to ensure they have the necessary knowledge for their job. Kids obsess with passing their test so much that they can’t focus on being a kid. When students get these test back and compare scores with others some might feel worthless and, it separates the smart kids from the ones who scores lower. “Schools selects NWEA as its testing vendor and reports an 80 percent proficiency rate. Now let’s say Worthington City Schools suburban Columbus selects PARCC and reports a 50 percent proficiency rate”…
Standardized testing, every student should be familiar with it, but is it nonsense? Does it actually help schools and their students advance in academic competence, or does it hinder their ability by adding more anxiety and stress to students? Jacequeline Howard, a twenty year old student helps us disclose on these examinations by giving us a student’s perspective on how standardized testing is not only changing the way government looks at funding, but also discouraging students and changing the way people look at students. Through Howards ethos, pathos, logos, and style in her essay, we can really see her passion for other students and her reason to promote a change.…
Standardized testing has been embedded in children from the time they first enter kindergarten all the way through grade school and high school years and finally ending in college and graduate school. It has become so frequent that it is no longer questioned why these tests are necessary, and by the time a person is finally through with school, they have taken an average of twenty to twenty-two tests. Although countless generations of Americans have had to sit through these tests, never have they played such a prominent role in schooling. Usually these exams were used to administer a child’s performance in the classroom and what he or she has learned so far, along with where…
Standardized testing is one of the most controversial and highly debated topics in the United States today. These tests are commonly used to measure the students’ academic achievements and act as yardstick for teachers’ effectiveness in academic delivery. A typical student sits for at least “112 compulsory standardized tests between pre-kindergarten classes and 12th grade” (Layton). Proponents of standardized testing believe that the practice provides accurate measurements of student performance and teachers effectiveness. On the other hand, opponents of standardized testing argue that a single test given on a single day can neither be an accurate measure of the students’ academic achievement nor a yardstick for teachers’ effectiveness in academic delivery. In fact, most of the countries which outperform the U.S. at international examinations test their students thrice throughout the course of schooling (Layton). The hypothesizes shows that standardized test is flawed and need to be addressed in order to improve the students’ creativity and restore…
It is hard to choose where you want to work when you start applying for jobs. The first place I started working at was a hospital named Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital. After that I moved to another hospital named Alexian Brothers where I worked and remained the rest of the time till I finished high school. I started working in a hospital because my future job is to be a surgeon. Working in a hospital gave me firsthand experience on being a surgeon. My job at Alexian Brothers was better than my job at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital because of the positive atmosphere, their appearance, and the people who worked there.…
Since the 1870’s, standardized testing has been around in the United States, and almost one hundred years later, the American College Testing Program (commonly referred to as the ACT) was created in 1959. The Bush administration of 2001 established today’s standardized testing methods with No Child Left Behind. Now in today’s society and learning environment this form of testing is hurting our students more than ever. Teachers and students alike are carrying the burden of these tests, ruining the educational system. These tests break students down into drones only focusing on this one, or sometimes multiple, tests that could determine the rest of their adult lives.…
The chief problem with U.S. schools apparently isn’t high dropout rates or underqualified teachers but standardized testing. This is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the push by parents and teachers in Buffalo, Philadelphia, Seattle and elsewhere to help students opt out of taking standardized tests.…
The pressure of succeeding in school is always bearing in a student's mind. Schools today utilize standardized testing to determine whether a student is promoted. For instance, ACT and SAT are examples of how educators view a student’s ability. With that being said, the majority of a student's diligent work is dedicated to one evaluation on a test. In some classes, a majority of classroom instruction is centered around testing. A standardized test score should not hinder a student from furthering their education. Use of standardized testing is not an effective measure of a student’s ability.…
Standardized testing has become the focus of modern school reform since the implementation of the No Child Left Behind law in 2002 (Evans 1). The act was designed to hold all public schools to a high standard of education, measured by the results of students’ test scores on statewide standardized tests. Not all students are good test takers, and not all careers require the ability to take traditional tests in order to be successful on the job. A significant number of students nowadays would care much about standardized tests. This is because students feel like they must worry about a test which directly affects their grades and ability to learn. Standardized tests place a heavy weight on students that can lead to stress, take up instruction timing, and students won’t be able to learn anything from them.…
Elementary students had begun taking standardized tests, the tests ranked teachers in grades 3-5 accordingly. Any person is able to see the “value-added performance” (Kuehn, Larry). Anxiety led to devastating occurrences; “One teacher, distressed by being singled out, committed suicide days after the individual teacher results were released” (Kuehn, Larry). The government did not take this incident seriously, even though they attempted to think about the issues, the final answer was “test better” (Kuehn, Larry). The tests are not accurate, voluminous students do not take the test completely and honestly; those students tend to lower the teacher’s ranking. A teacher can never actually make students try their hardest on the standardized tests; the students must put forth the effort in order for all scores and teacher’s rankings to be a reflection of their…
“If the purpose of learning is to score well on a test, we’ve lost sight of the real reason for learning”. Admits Jeannie Fulbright. Students should not take standardized tests. Testing takes up too much time, there are too many tests, and schools have to wait too long for results.…