STANDARDIZED TESTS: JUST A TOOL

... Recently author Anya Kamenetz wrote a book called The Test. Kamenetz states, " They are making the teachers hate teaching, high stakes standardized tests deprofessionalize teaching because they give outside authority the final say"(20). It is the teacher who went to college to further their education ... truly pointless. It doesn't tell how smart a student is because some people don't work well under pressure and stress" and "Standardized tests do not test a student's knowledge whatsoever; they test memory. Then students cheat because they are more about grades than learning". These comm...

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• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: High School

... as a menace to quality teaching and learning" (Phelps). A tool that educators use to learn about students and their learning capabilities is the standardized test. Standardized tests are designed to give a common measure of a student's performance. Popular tests include the SAT, IQ tests, Regents Exams, and the ACT. "Three kinds of standardized tests are used frequently in schools: achievement, diagnostic, and aptitude" ... while real learning suffers" (Phelps). Performance based assessment guarantees an increased understanding of the growth of individual child. Such understanding reduces...

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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... students, however most feel that it will be detrimental to the learning process. The definition of the word test is "a basis for evaluation or judgment." This is exactly how these standardized tests should be used, as a basis. A basis of how to make the Public School System more efficient, as opposed to a basis of whether or not a student should or ... and even entire districts. (Robinson and Craver 1989). There are a vast amount of ways for a student's progress to be assessed in a classroom with standardized testing being just one of the procedures. The other major assessment tool is th...

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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... got there is not as important as what to do with them. So I think that we all need to understand that using computers as a tool to help students learn is a necessary and natural evolution of the educational process. There are those new age Luddites and some educators that say we ... they were already using the most advanced technologies that were available at that time such as up-to-date textbooks and in my case calculators. Just as I had incorporated the use of calculators in my studies so has the younger generation incorporated the use of computers. My nieces are using ... Computers ...

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• Grade Level: High School

... important writers or scholars. I believe that the government has a compelling interest in the state of educational affairs for this very reason. Also, perhaps the most widely accepted tool of the government to measure success (or arguably, punish failure) is the notion of accountability. Accountability works for the government because, theoretically, the buck stops with the president ... a regurgitation of knowledge that children learn for the sole purpose of answering questions on a standardized test correctly. Standardized tests, particularly the SAT, have no value for measuring the le...

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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... standards, weak curriculum, a meager support system and even teachers' resistance to control. Teachers claim that, "The tests shape what I teach, what order I teach in and how long I spend on each subject."" (Hurwitz & Hurwitz, 2000). These are just a few of many complaints pundits have of the standards movement. Others question the possibility of creating standards that ... Student Performance There are serious consequences educators must consider if standardized tests are to be the sole assessment tool used to evaluate student performance. Although they do hone students skills at taki...

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... roles assessments play in education I am getting a picture that assessment and reading go together. Before taking education classes I always just though about assessments as far as being the tools, just test and quizzes, that teachers used to gauge their students. I now see that the area of assessment is like a big ... It provides for both the teacher and student a way of reflecting on past work and looking towards future products. It is a good communication tool. The chapter also talks about how trends in reading assessment tend to vary in the field of education and this is because educa...

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... Many Americans, including parents and business leaders, are also alarmed by what they see as inadequate levels of student achievement in subjects such as reading, mathematics, and science. On many standardized tests, American students lag behind their counterparts in Europe and Asia. In response, some Americans have urged the adoption of national standards by which individual schools can be evaluated. Some have ... consolidated school districts into larger units with common procedures. In 1940 there were over 117,000 school districts in the United States, but by 1990 the number had decre...

• Word Count: 7852
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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... while using critical thinking skills on essay items. Open-ended questions can also provide valuable information when teachers provide students with their expectations. Written assignments Written assignment is an assignment tool that provides information about students" progress, efforts, achievements, strengths and weaknesses. The scores or grades for assignments can be used to form part of a record of students" ... thinking processes such as identifying problems, formulating hypotheses, designing and implementing strategies and evaluation. Although this type of assessment is good, bu...

• Word Count: 1455
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate