While the data gathered from standardized tests is obviously important, many students of middle and high school age don’t take the tests seriously enough for them to give accurate results, anyway.
Advertisement
■ The average student surveyed in the 66 districts will take about eight standardized tests per year.
“What happens if somebody puts a cap on testing, and to meet the cap ends up eliminating tests that could actually be helpful, or leaves the redundancy in the test and gets rid of a test that teachers can use to inform their instruction?” asked Mr Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, an organisation that represents about 70 large urban school districts. No US student should be required to spend more than 2 percent of the school year taking mandatory standardized tests, his administration declared.
Following this weekend’s announcement from President Barack Obama that standardized testing needs to be scaled back, this new study is timely and relevant. In a video released on Facebook last week, the president said students should spend no more than two percent of their time taking and preparing for tests used to evaluate school and teacher performance. Smarter Balanced tests in English and math last 8 1/2 hours and the state science test takes about one hour.
Academics point to many other negative consequences of testing as well.
“It’s very overwhelming for parents and I don’t think, they don’t understand maybe the reasoning behind it or the need for the constant evaluation”. After five years, these schools must write up a plan for restructuring, and the following year they need to make those changes. They followed up to check as districts adjusted their plans. And still, teachers are judged based on their students’ test scores and are given bad measures when they results are poor. This year, the movement has found support across all 50 states…In New York state alone, the number of students opting out has more than tripled this year.
Consider, as well, public vouchers that help low-income families pay for parochial and private school. The district also offers all juniors a free opportunity to take the ACT, but students do not have to take it. She says that she’s concerned with the statewide standardized testing initiated through Common Core and has been an active opponent.
Similarly, the action plan’s recommendations for flexibility in use of test scores for educator evaluation mirror things Colorado already is doing, said Katy Anthes, the state education department’s interim associate commissioner. Teachers can assign pop quizzes, chapter tests and written reports every day without question – that assessment we trust is necessary.
Going to school, we were all told the importance of being prepared for tests. His organization just issued a report on student testing. Business leaders and university administrators were getting too many high school graduates who lacked basic reading and math skills, much less the tools to compete in the 21st century.
What seems to be the keystone here is that school administrations should be focusing on the quality of tests rather than the quantity, just as former Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville suggested to the Globe.
Advertisement
When it comes to a few assessments, he said the district’s hands are still tied by state requirements. It called on Congress to “reduce over-testing” as it reauthorises the federal legislation governing the nation’s public elementary and secondary schools.
