How effective are standardized tests?

While reading through Chapter 4 of Content Reading, a lot of emphasis was put on high stakes testing and how the different levels of government use that information. The emphasis that the government has put on test scores is much higher than it ever has before. Government programs such as No Child Left Behind have been put in place to ensure that students are meeting certain benchmarks in school. As a result of these various programs, it seems as though students are under pressure in order to achieve scores that are deemed passing. After reading through this chapter, I am not fully convinced that standardized testing is the most appropriate way to demonstrate what students have learned.

I agree with the authors of the textbook when they suggest that a major concern over these standardized tests is that too much emphasis gets placed on test preparation. Teachers will simply teach what the students need to know in order to do well on the standardized tests. This results to neglecting other subjects like fine arts or social studies, all of which are equally important to the subjects that are on standardized tests. Personally, I have never been fully convinced that standardized testing was the best way to show what students know. I personally do not perform well on standardized tests, and my ACT score would not reflect my GPA in high school. I think that it is important to have the government involved, and to have standards that need to be met, but I think that some of the legislation needs to be revised.

It was very interesting to read about the criticism for No Child Left Behind. I had never really considered the fact that some states may lower their proficiency standards in order to continue to receive federal funding. This gives an illusion that schools are making progress when in reality no significant progress is being made. I like what North Carolina is doing with their ABC model.  I like that there are opportunities given to students to retest as well as personalized plans with more monitoring. The high school level requires end-of-course exams which I believe would be effective because teachers could then test on their own curriculum instead of teaching to the test.

I think that a much more effective way to demonstrate students performance is in portfolios. I like this idea because it allows students and teachers to work together to include different pieces in the portfolio. It is also continuously being built throughout a semester. There is far less pressure put on students to perform well as they would have to on a standardized test. Portfolios also allow students to evaluate themselves which could help motivate them in the long run. Portfolios would also enable teachers to see where certain students might need more help, and where they excel. I believe that in the future student portfolios will give the government a better idea of how well students are doing rather than the standardized tests.