• Teachers and parents are concerned with whether standardized tests are a good indicator of a child's intelligence.…
statewide tests in English and math have been used to determine which schools are doing a good…
After reading the first two articles I found an article called " Some U.S. schools doing just fine" by Thomas L.Friedman. This article talks about how come the U.S not doing as well as other countries. There are questions many people would like to know the answers to. Such as the article mentiones " Why are we not doing as well as schools in…
e thesis of this article is that tests of intelligence d cognitive ability are cultural genres (Cole, 85; Greenfield, in press; Lave, 1986). This thesis is identified with a theoretical perspective that has come to be known as cultural psychology (Bruner, 1990; Cole, 1990; Price-Williams, 1980; Shweder, 1990; Stigler, Shweder, & Herdt, 1990). I develop this thesis by showing how ability tests presuppose a particular cultural framework. Most important, I demonstrate that this framework is not universally shared. Therefore, when it comes to tests of ability and intelligence, it is often the case that " y o u can't take it with you." There is, however, an alternative point of view, briefly summarized as " y o u can take it with you." This view, generally identified with a perspective called crosscultural psychology (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992; van de Vijver & Leung, 1997), is that ability tests are intrinsically transportable from one culture to another. With appropriate linguistic translation, administration by a "native" tester, and (less frequently) the provision of familiar content, the notion is that ability tests…
There are different people in the world who have impacted students’ life. In my 9 years of school, there has been one teacher that I really loved and she really impacted on my life by the way she handled things and how she lived her life. Her name was Mrs. Hollenbaugh. She impacted my life because she would always encourage us to stick to our dreams and also because she would take responsibility unlike some people and own up to her mistakes. But she would learn from that mistake and become a better person by not doing that mistake again.…
The opinions of Herrnstein and Murray in their book, The Bell Curve is that human intelligence is both inherited and also has environmental factors that contribute to a person’s future in many different areas such as; finances, a career, when they start a family, and whether or not a person will break the law instead of a person’s level of education and economic status. The authors go on to say that the more intelligent people of society are keeping their distance from the less intelligent, staying within their own group of intelligence. There is a chapter of the book that discusses the different ethnicities and the score differences among them on intelligence tests and I disagree with what they say. Intelligence in my opinion is not accurately measured when it comes to all ethnicities groups because of the people that create the tests. I think that there should be tests created by all types of ethnicities. Can an African American formulate an IQ test for all Asians to take in order to measure their intelligence? In my opinion I would say, no. According to Herrnstein and Murray intelligence is 40% to 80% heritable. It is my theory that this would be terribly hard to predict without measuring the IQ’s of the majority of people in the entire world. Some people never have their IQ tested. I have never had an IQ test. So the only data there is pertains to people that have been tested, there is no accurate count of how many people have never been tested, as far as I can tell. There are socioeconomic factors that would play a role in the scores of people across all racial groups because it is my opinion that people who have access to an education can develop higher intelligence, and not all of us have the luxury of getting a good education or getting an education at all. I believe there is something about intelligent people having children that are intelligent but at the same time I know parents who both are very intelligent but have a child who is…
Ravitch also points out that those countries who push a rigorous curriculum at a young age and expect discipline and hard work are the countries that are now surpassing America in many fields. "There is a growing real world correspondence between our declining test results and our declining economic prowess"…
America is a country that currently spends more money on public education per student than any other nation in the world; nevertheless, these good intensions have achieved only slight positive outcomes. For instance, in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), an authoritative test used to measure the education levels of students from 53 countries, American students ranked 12th in reading, 17th in science, and 26th in math. No doubt, a question like this one has been argued for decades “ what exactly is happening in foreign countries that allows them to out-pass America in terms of academics?” The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way is an illuminating book by Amanda Ripley that answers the question by showing how other countries educate their kids in a much more effective way than we do.…
used to show how Americans put a greater emphasis on sports than we do on…
She mentions there is only one standardized test during the entire time students are in school, kids have more time to be kids, college is free, and the teaching profession is a job that is always in high demand. This article was written by Abby Jackson on April 3, 2015. It was published on the Business Insider. Jackson graduated from Yale University and has a degree in political science. I am using this article in my essay because it discusses four main points of what Finland does better than the United States. The article is almost two years old but is still fairly recent. I would like to do some fact checking on this article but I believe it would be a trustworthy source to…
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…
Within every student is an unfathomable amount of details that make him or her think and act the way they do. Their intellectual level cannot, and should not, be based entirely on one high-stakes test at the term’s end. In agreement with this is professor of education and public policy, George Madaus. According to him, these tests “leave out one of the most informational things we have about these kids, and that’s teacher judgements.” This statement is a perfect example of the faults high-stakes testing has. Measures of achievement hold more substance than a simple arithmetic test can provide. Personality traits, moral development, the infinite complexities we have, these can only be judged by human interaction.…
With accountability for standardized testing being a new trend in America, today, many do not realize how long ago they were actually used and why they are being used now. Dan Fletcher wrote in a Time magazine article that China was the first country to ever develop standardized tests, which were used to test government officials (4). This new idea began to move westward, but writing essays was still the favored method of testing. However, in 1905, America began to conform to the new trend, and Alfred Binet developed the IQ test, which "emerged as an easy way to test large numbers of students quickly"(Fletcher 5). Today, standardized tests have become the sole measure of not only student success, but also the success of the school and teachers. A few years ago, in 2001, George W. Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which…
While many still insist that standardized testing gives us an accurate and comprehensive look into what students are learning because they are objective, fair, efficient and comprehensive (Walberg) this isn’t the case. The truth is they are a very poor judge of student achievement because they are still just very small samples of behavior that conclusions are drawn from. And while these tests might be fair, based on time limits and all tests being identical (or nearly) they are not equitable. Fair means everyone gets the same, whereas equitable means everyone gets what they need. As a student who continues to take standardized tests annually I have seen first hand that intelligence cannot be adequately measured by a standardized tests. Many students are equally as smart as their peers, but perhaps learn differently and therefore cannot always demonstrate their intelligence on a standardized test. It’s time that we recognize we have the ability to make school equitable and meet the needs of all,…
Wagner , T. (2008). The Global Achievement Gap . New York , NY : Basic Books.…