Do High Stakes Assesments Improves Learning?

High stakes assessment testing is done in most if not all public schools. Children typically receive their first paper and pencil test in kindergarten. Testing is done for several reasons: those who score in the bottom quartile are encouraged or required to spend another year in kindergarten, or are placed in a K-1 transitional setting that often leads to later retention. The tests used in the majority of school districts have expanded in their purposes. For example, children's scores now determine whether they will be placed in a gifted and talented program or become eligible for special tutoring. Results of a

In theory, high stakes assessment exams has two man objectives: more-stringent academic standards and increasingly rigorous accountability for both students and schools. Ideally, if there are high stakes attached to the exam, the examinee will perform to their best ability. School reform has focused on these objectives in order to improve education. The rationale of the assessment exams is that children benefit from the knowledge teachers gain from these test. Yet, teachers gain little important knowledge from such tests, and children are put under tremendous pressure from school and from parents.

High-stakes testing is not helping student or teachers, so why do we continue putting such a significant amount of time, effort, and taxpayers money into these exams? As my instructor in EDUC 350 Erika Seemann mentioned several times in class, “We have to define ourselves as a profession.” Teachers need to take a stand; we are in this profession obviously not for the pay, but for the children. As more states educators demand for a different way to measure progress and less emphasis on multiple-guess tests, we could breakaway from standardized exams and high stakes assessments. There may not be a perfect way to assess learners, but there must be a better way. I believe that some schools in Oceanside are already doing portfolios of student’s learning. With a portfolio you can see “learner’s effort, progress, and achievement” (Armstrong, 257). I agree with the portfolio idea, one can keep tack of “assessment and the instructional process,” as mentioned in the book which is being used in EDUC 350, “assessment plays multiple roles in the instructional process. These include: placement assessment, formative assessment, and summative assessment” (Armstrong, 257). If children’s learning is so important to us, then we must all work hard to make their learning experience the best we can make it to be.

Students' description of MCAS grouped into two main categories: positive responses to MCAS and negative responses to MCAS. In the few positive responses to MCAS students expressed in drawings: diligence, persistence, confidence, and some students drew themselves thinking and solving problems. On the other hand there were many negative responses to MCAS students, which demonstrated test difficulty, test length (17 hours), content, and items. In addition students demonstrated anxiety, anger, hostility, boredom, sadness, disappointment, pessimism, loss of motivation, withdrawal from testing, and relief once the testing was over. “The drawings generated by this invitation have allowed us to explore how students respond to MCAS testing. The drawings challenge t

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