Standardized Testing

On Tuesday, we divided into groups and focused on different problems with today's education in chapter 15.  In my group we looked at standardized testing and accountability.  The book talked about the spread of the accountability movement in the 1970s and states beginning to require schools to annually publish standardized test scores.  Our group talked about how in our classes and in education, we are always focusing on how every child is different and has different needs and abilities in our classrooms.  However, One Child Left Behind and standardized testing group children together on one level.  How are students with different abilities and strengths/weaknesses supposed to be expected to take the exact same tests and receive a certain score on them to pass?  This is a major problem in education today.

As our group continued talking about standardized testing, we all seemed to have negative experiences with standardized tests.  We all rememebered becoming very stressed out on the days of these tests and claimed that this had a negative impact on our scores.  I remember many times after taking a standardized test, that I felt that I did awful and could not have passed since there was so much information that I had to guess on.  For example, taking the GRE in college, I remember being unfamiliar with many of the vocabulary words in the verbal section, even though I had studied numerous texts that were made to do well on that section.  If we are guessing on so many of the questions, what good is this really?  I understand that students must be assessed to be aware of their knowledge and progress in each of the subjects, however, can't we come up with a better, less stressful way of doing this?  Not only are the students stressed out about these tests, but so are the teachers.  The pressure teachers have to prepare their students to take proficiency tests and other state tests is forcing them to spend time teaching for the tests, rather than on information that would be more valuable to the students.  This is one of the things that I do not look forward to as a teacher and will have to figure out a way to incorporate this into my class while still teaching the lessons.  It is important that we do the best we can as teachers to help our students avoid having the negative feelings and experiences that my group experienced towards these tests, even though it will definitely be a challenge.