So as every Junior in Michigan I had to take the ACT test as well as a few state wide standardized tests. For those who don't know what the ACT is it's a standardized test that has 5 sections, grammar, math, reading, science and a 30 minute Essay. The test along with the SAT test is used by most colleges here in the US to determine who's admissible and who's not. So, I've got 3 questions. One, do you think standardized tests are an accurate way of judging what a student has learned or how well they will do in post-high school education, two, should these test results be used to determine school funding and three, if you said no to either question why and what should replace it?
1) No, they are not accurate. The best way to judge a student is to take their year long grades and evaluate them on that. Anyone can have an off-day where they just suck at tests or whatever. Plus, it would be more statistically significant to use the entire school year instead of 3 half days. 2) Schools should get funding based on need and since I already stated that the tests are shitty at judging anything, they should not determine who gets money.
No and no. Standardized testing is an abomination that is necessary. Because people just don't go into the necessary profession, there are too few teachers to bring the teacher-student ratio down to the level in which teachers can accurately assess a student's abilities and make accurate reports. Standardized testing tries to fit people into a mold that they may not be able to in spite of having other useful abilities. I know at least three high school students in their junior years with extremely low GPAs. In contrast to what that shows, these students are technological geniuses. They all are able to build, program, and maintain computers. One of them is even an intern at a computer maintainence company. They are capible of mathematics that other students their age struggle to grasp the basic concepts of. But the standardized tests are capible of dooming them to low positions in the workforce. The fact is that the standardized test doesn't make exceptions or compensations for individuals such as this. On the other hand, standardized testing is necessary to accuratly [in the loosest terms] give a picture of the capibilities of the future work force. Not funding a school due to bad marks is a faulty logic. If a school scores low and is docked, they lose materials and personnel that may give them the ability to raise their scores. It is one thing to ridicule a school for not having properly taught the applications of the laws of physics, but another to take away their funding. How can you expect a student to build a working toy car having never recieved anything more than theoretical training in it from textbooks that are outdated, heavily marked over, and falling apart? Some students may be able to do it, but rewarding a school for a minority means that when they are gone, the majority suffer. Schools need proper funding and more teachers, not more administration. They need to lower the teacher-student ratio and raise teacher preformance.
Everything about standardized testing is wrong. Neither highschool GPA, nor SAT/ACT scores are indicative of anything really. SAT scores are more likely to predict intelligence then GPA, but neither are good indicators in and of themselves. I've dealt with a lot of students from across the board of intelligence, work ethic, and results. There correlation between high test scores / gpa scores and university success is a non spurious relationship. Most of it is a result of the kids who do better in highschool, do so because of a work ethic which carries on to the next level. Grades at even most of the higher undergraduate level (there are some exceptions of course) are a result of work put in, not some innate ability. There isn't really a measure for this, nor should there be. To demonstrate what a horrible transition in writing is, allow me to talk about the problem with highschool education in the US. Standardized tests as a means for public funding forces teachers to teach to a standard, rather then to the student. The net result is you have kids who might be able to solve some basic algebra, but have no clue, how to say, use transitions in writing to make essays palatable. As a teachers assistant in one of my political philosophy classes, I'm noticing a huge difference between students my age (the last year or so before No Child Left Behind came into affect) and this current generation of students. Put simple, they don't know thing one about writing or expressing themselves in a coherent and interesting fashion. Because the tests emphasize math and science, kids have no idea how to express themselves in a coherent and interesting fashion. My Professor and I have graded 16 papers so far this semester, and not one of them would have received a passing grade on the first draft. You would think that by the 400 level of a college political philosophy course, students would understand at least the basics about constructing a sound argument, and utilizing their own insights in addition to the text. Sadly, due to the system in place, students tend to just regurgitate whatever they think is going to be on the test. /end drunk rant
I definitely agree. I've always tried to learn outside of school and aside from algebra and math almost all of my knowledge didn't actually come from school. English class drives me crazy, it's terrible watered down. We were supposed to go over Hamlet this year, instead of reading the play and looking at the significance of it we watched the movie and talked about what Mel Gibson did. I learned nothing valuable from it and did poorly because I knew this was the only way the school could fulfill graduation requirements and not have half the class fail because they had to think for once. My peers are really good at following steps and repetition but is really poor at attacking a problem with their own wits. The school prepares them to take the test and only that even though the tests should mean very little and are putting real education on the back burner. This kills their English skills, deep thinking, social study skills and even scientific thought. That coupled with how addicted my generation is to entertainment means we learn next to nothing.
Until college (16-18 years old typically) I saw education as a hoop to jump through rather than something wondrous. Which is what it should be. Education should be enlightening, fascinating, empowering and inspirational. Instead it was more about memorising information for exams. There were exceptions of course, usually correlating with my subjective approval of the teacher. College was great for me as it allowed me to study what I wanted to study (although you can pick a few subjects in school, but there are fundamental subjects that you must study.) Education shouldn't be about absorbing information from a curriculum, it should be about kids working together to discover information themselves, with a teacher more a helper than a lecturer. This empowers kids. It says that they can discover things themselves and that they are capable, rather than telling them that they must pay attention and copy down what the teacher is saying, leaving them subordinated. This man inspired my current opinion on the matter with a fascinating lecture:
It should say enough about the ACT that they have to keep lowering the standards of the questions just so people can pass it. And I think they should just stop funding schools altogether. The purpose of compulsory schooling is not to educate, it's to destroy the inquisitive spirit, to create unimaginative little drones that will do whatever is asked of them, especially if what's being asked is to sit in a cubicle all day watching your fucking soul being drained. I dropped out of high school last September, took my GED, and now I'm taking classes in a community college until I can transfer to some University that hopefully doesn't make me want to take a kitchen knife to my arteries.
Pedro: Also, No Child Left Behind as well as this insane international comparison of scores has made people more willing to just give the A then teach. I mean, the entire academic (third track, remedial classes, etc.) education in my school was just about passing the lazy (and they were lazy, trust me) students so the school didn't look bad. I'll comment more later, gotta go. (to school ironically).
No standerdize tests do nothing at all to determine, even in an estimation, the successfulness of a school's teaching abilities. It only helps students learn how to take a test and less how to critically think and comprehend something quickly, which is the definition of intelligence. I don't even know if you can just say that teaching hampers someone's writing skill and ability to express one's thoughts completely. In math and science classes many students merely learn how to solve a problem without it actually being explained to them clearly how to do it. In many English classes you merely learn what authors mean by a certain sentence and less of what the books themes. One also doesn't seem to fully grasp the message of many books and usually it's either exlained by the teacher or just bypassed altogether. Now with writing skills many of the essays one must write is basically what's your opinion and explain why. Many times a school merely lowers the passing grades or just tries to segregate "intelligent" students from the "dumb" ones in order to make itself look better during tests. Also as mentioned before many schools merely lower the passing level rather than actually improving the education a child recieves. It strikes me as well that more and more people seem less interested in actually learning and look at school as something you just have to do rather than a chance to stimulate their minds. Now this all in my personal experience of my school's education system so one must take this into account as anecdotal evidence and not statistical evidence, which I'm sure there's a lot of.
Back from school (we got out early for standardized testing). Pedro, I agree. I've noticed that my school has been placing more emphasis on math and sciences in the past few years. While I can't say that this is in any way a bad thing, I've also noted a fairly unfortunate trend among the English departments in US education. As many of the last era's teachers retire, many of my English and Lit. teachers have been younger, those who graduated high school in the late 80's and early 90's. One thing I've noticed about them is best put as too much time watching The Dead Poet Society. They focus mostly on trying to bring out 'creativity' and 'love of reading', rather than adequate writing. They try to have 'fun' with literature, rather than focus on more practical applications. This reflects in even the remedial classes that should be focused on helping students who really need to learn how to write properly: they do little activites instead. It's quite frustrating. To date, only my English teacher this year has focused on reading and writing, and I've found that I'm a much better writer for it (not great, just better). When it comes down to it, it's everyone's fault: government incompetence in No Child Left Behind, some students for being insanely lazy, but I think teachers really need to examine themselves as well. While I'm a nerd and think this stuff is cool and make jokes about freak weather patters like "I guess there's a new king of Scotland" (kudos if you get that), most people are frankly not interested in Lit, so at least teach them to write. It frustrates me to now end when teachers complain about their students failing the PSSA (Standardized test in Pennsylvania), but have no class time in teaching writing. Another thing we need to consider is the international pressure to have high test scores. Everyone's education system is different, and so is the tests which students take which makes all of the statistics null and void.
While I agree they should focus more on pratical purpose such as the abiltiy to express one's thoughts in an essay while applying proper format, punctuation and idea formation. I do think it's logical to try and make English based subjects more interesting rather than just educational. Not many people do things that aren't interesting to them. I don't find soap operas interesting so I don't watch them or I don't like the concepts of relationship presented within romance novels so I don't read them. If people don't find something interesting they don't pay attention to it which while sad is an unfortunate truth within the world.
I agree with this. In my english class, we have been reading MacBeth and doing an essay. Because of this, our schedule is freaking crazy. We do the essay some days, and Macbeth the others. Now it went to us doing the essay on our own and reading MacBeth in class. I can't do the essay because I didn't freaking learn how to do it! It is partly my fault, but they really didn't teach us how to do it besides giving us some papers and some class time. They focus on more than one things and expect us to get it down the first time. They need to teach us how to do it before they give us the assignment. Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, King hereafter
You guys complain to much. I'm sure if there was a better system (that didn't cost enough money to start Gingrich's Moon Colony) they'd have thought it up and be using it now. It's the best of a bad situation.
I believe that there is a constant effort to improve the system. Whether or not it works is another issue.
