ASSESSING CHILDREN’S GROWTH
I would like to share an article on
“How Standardized Testing Damages Education K – 12 Grade (Updated July 2012) by: Fairtest
HOW STANDARDIZED TESTING DAMAGES EDUCATION
“The No Child Left
Behind (NCLB) era has seen an unprecedented expansion of standardized testing
and test misuse. Despite ample evidence of the flaws, biases and inaccuracies
of standardized exams, NCLB and related state and federal policies, such as
Race to the Top (RTTT) and the NCLB waivers, have pressured schools to use
tests to measure student learning, achievement gaps, and teacher and school
quality, and to impose sanctions based on test scores. This is on top of using
tests to determine if children are ready for school; track them into instructional
levels; diagnose learning disabilities, retardation and other handicaps; and
decide whether to promote, retain in grade, or graduate. School systems also
use tests to guide and control curriculum content and teaching”.
Reference
fairtest.org/how-standardized-testing-damages-education...
Here in Chicago our children have
gone through several Standardize Testing to see how their academic progress
measure from K through ones Senor Year in High School. These Standardize Test consist of:
ISAT – “The Illinois Standard Achievement Test” measures individual student
achievement relative to the Illinois Learning Standards
ACT -the ACT is a national college admissions examination that consists of
subject area tests in English,
Mathematics, Reading, and Science, and Writing.
SAT- it’s the nation's most widely used admissions exam among colleges and
universities. SAT is more of an aptitude test, testing reasoning and verbal
abilities.
School send notices home stating
“Parents need to provide their child/ children with a well balance breakfast,
and make sure your child get proper sleep to do well on their test”.
When a children are being tested in
areas such as Math, Reading and English, it shows the areas the child need to
improvement in. If, children scores are
not high enough one is unable to proceed to the next grade level at the end of
the school year. Teacher also, measure a
children once, they are finish “Reading” to measure their comprehension and
spelling of words. For example, a third
grader word consist of accident, token, appreciation.
Once he /she pass‘s they are able to move to
the next level in reading. Usually there
is a certain level a child has to complete also, before going to the next grade
or they must go to summer school. Thank
God my grandson passed to the next level and was able to the 7th
grade next year. Grant Wiggins, EdD.,
present and director of programs, Relearning by Design, Ewing, New Jersey
states,
“Assessment should be deliberately designed to
improve and educate student performance, not merely to audit as most school
tests currently do”. I to believe Grant
Wiggins that “Assessments” should be given to assist the child were he / she
needs improving.
Global grade: How do U.S.
students compare?
The
article states, “The United States may be superpower but, in education
students lag behind. In 57 countries, students in Finland came out on top
overall. Finnish 15-year-olds did their best in science and came in second in
math. Other top-performing countries were: Hong Kong, Canada, Taiwan, Estonia,
Japan and Korea”. United States' scores still has remained about the
same in math between 2003 and 2006, and the Programme for International
Students were given (PISA) Assessment while, other nations such as, Estonia and
Poland being two, improved their scores and moved past the U.S. Researchers now say, “United States has one of the
biggest gaps between high- and low-performing students in an industrialized
nation, Finland has one of the smallest. Students in Finland perform remarkably
well, regardless of the school they attend”.
You can read more of this article at:
www.greatschools.org/.../1075-u-s-students-compare.gs
