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

How Standardized Testing Damages Education (Updated July 2012)...

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:

 

• NWEA – “a global not-for-profit educational services organization known for our flagship interim assessment, Measures of Academic Progress (MAP)”.

• 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 7^th 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:

Global grade: How do U.S. students compare? - Academic skills...

www.greatschools.org/.../1075-u-s-students-compare.gs