your thoughts on standardized testing (arrested, hire, activity, valid)

[TabulaRasa]

The majority of my work is in Special Ed, and within that frame of observation, I find standardized testing to generally be a waste of time, as far as producing meaningful results. These are students whose education is highly individualized; they don't receive a standardized education, but rather progress by meeting individually developed benchmarks relevant to their needs. Standardized assessments don't fit that model at all.

[Magritte25]

Originally Posted by Ivorytickler

My thoughts? Poorly executed necessary evil. We need some way to measure student progress but the tests we use are poorly written. They don't really test what a child should have learned in the past year.

Personally, I think we need exit exams for every grade/subject in school and if students don't pass the test they don't pass the grade/subject. We need to stop just pushing kids forward who lack the skills to go on.

I agree with this and I would support exit exams for each grade level/subject.

[Old Gringo]

Standardized testing certainly has its place and it needs to be returned to it.

The silly high stakes attached to it becomes the problem. Using test results as the only measure of performance for students, teachers, campuses and districts is beyond stupid. Education is supposed to be anti-stupid. Micromanaging political policies = very stupid.

Is there anyone who cares to argue that public education has improved over the past dozen years or so?

[tnff]

No. They are not only unnecessary, but a negative. Too much time spent on the tests and test prep rather than teaching and learning.

[LLN]

You folks are thinking way too small.

These tests are big money for corporations and hence, their frontmen, the politicians.

It is all about the money. Any and every school district can justify, some well, why scores are poor, there is always a reason.

But, with every test, someones pocket gets some coin, and all likelihood, someone else's pocket gets lined.

Nothing to do with education or assessment, it is just money!

[maf763]

Sad but true. It's a consequence of society's embracing of the idiocy that schools should be run like businesses.

[Momma_bear]

We moved our kids to private school to take them out of the high stakes public school world. Even if you opt out of testing the public schools still spend an inordinate amount of time preparing for standardized tests.

[Oldhag1]

Originally Posted by Momma_bear

We moved our kids to private school to take them out of the high stakes public school world. Even if you opt out of testing the public schools still spend an inordinate amount of time preparing for standardized tests.

Which is, the bigger problem. If we just gave a test once a year it wouldn't be that big of a deal but what it have evolved into is us teaching testing, not subjects.

[fred44]

Mostly a waste of time. Just use SAT's when a student is a junior and leave it at that. It's the only standardized test that really matters and is the same throughout the country.

[Meemur]

I think that the original intention of standardized testing was fine and it somewhat worked because the economy was good enough for students who couldn't learn in school to go take a factory job.

Then the economy fell apart and a large segment of students who weren't previously tested started being tested, and that led to a huge gap of academic haves vs. have nots.

Then the tests started getting politically correct and questions were revised. The results now can't be compared to past decades, and I'm not sure that the data is truly meaningful at all. I see students from "good" school systems with serious problems in reading comprehension and even reading at the 11th grade level when they are in the 2nd year in a 4-year college.

At this point, I think that all mandatory standardized testing should be dropped. Make testing optional for college-bound students only in grades 10, 11, and 12.