Foo - Standardized testing, like or dislike?

What do you think of standardized testing? SAT's, tests to be taken as a measure of progress of public school, etc.
Do you feel they properly access knowledge or reasoning skills?

No - they test you on how well one can take a test.

No - they test you on how well one can take a test.


Hence my affinity for them :D

No - they test you on how well one can take a test.

+1 :)

I'll be the rare YES vote here, I think.

But let me add one big condition to that. I think they're great, IF the people interpreting them understand EXACTLY what the test is testing. In other words, I don't think there's really anything wrong with standardized tests, as long as the results of those tests are interpreted and applied from an appropriate frame of reference.

No - they test you on how well one can take a test.
wow.... no @#$% sherlock...

Not a big fan.

No - they test you on how well one can take a test.

But I'm good at taking tests. :D

Measurements must be made somehow. So testing is required. Testing should be standardized so that results are meaningful. Standardized tests in concept are a good thing. Not all standardized tests are good tests, though.

I've always been good taker of tests. I think tests are the only way you can accurately gauge how much the student is actually learning.

You know what I dislike
Getting 95% on tests while doing only 10-20% of the homework and ending up with a D-
What is that?
You do all your homework well and test in the 80's and you get yourself damn close to a 4.0. That was my life in school. I had counselors telling me that UC schools were out of my range considering I could barely pass classes.

Not everything is fair.
Considering how many kids can't read well, spell, find countries or
Lots of people are dumb. I say more more more more tests. Don't allow schools to hide behind inflated grades.

they have purpose, but you cannot expect the whole of the US to achieve the same standards when they do not receive the same education.

Standardized tests are valid only for standardized students. For anyone with ADD, dyslexia, or even ESL, the results are going to be less than standard even if the student is gifted.

Standardized tests are valid only for standardized students. For anyone with ADD, dyslexia, or even ESL, the results are going to be less than standard even if the student is gifted.
This points to the difficulty of measuring an individual student's results via standardized testing. And it's a valid point. But another purpose of standardized testing is to compare populations of students. How can you know if a system of education is doing its job or not if you do not have data to work with? Standardized testing isn't the only way to get this data, but it is a way. And any other way will subject some students to unfair disadvantages, too.

No - they test you on how well one can take a test.

No. Actually they test how well teachers teach the test.:mad:

The one they call the "MEAP" in michigan was without question designed by republicans to cut funding to schools in poor areas. Yep, I hate that ****.

I think they are a good aid to help you figure out if your teaching is getting the job done, as long as you are not teaching the test. If you teach the test, you suck.
As a teacher I would rather see a real example of how I am doing as a teacher, then, I can use it to get better and the student will benefit from it.
Steven

Tests are bad, mmmkay. I have a test tomorrow....that I should probably be studying for right now....damn.

Hmmmm. They definitely only test how well you can take a test, but I am good at taking tests, so I like them, but they are bad. But they got me a college scholarship. So, I am biased.

I don't like them. I don't like tests in general. I'm bad at taking tests, especially long ones like the SATs. I just get bored filling in bubble after bubble. I progressively get more answers wrong as the test goes on.

There is a need for them though. There needs to be a way to measure academic progress. Establish a set of basic concepts that are standard, teach these standard concepts in a way that students can understand, then test the students' understanding. Just because a student performs poorly doesn't mean the teacher is failing though.

Mister,

The problem with that is that people learn differently. Like me, I have ADD. I don't learn like other people I went to school with. Standardised tests said that I read at a 4th grade level when I was in 8th grade. I was put in a remedial class where the teacher found I was reading at an 11th grade level.

That reminds me of another pet pieve of mine. After I bombed on the standardised tests my doctor said I should take Rittalin. So in essence what she was saying is that I should take anphetamines so I would learn like the other kids in my class since the school was too damn stupid to accomodate different learning types.

Sorry for the rant everybody, but this issue bugs me.

No. Actually they test how well teachers teach the test.:mad:

Exactly...and the overwhelming emphasis on them today has sucked the creativity in teaching out of public schooling.

The problem with that is that people learn differently.

That is one thing that will never be valued in public schooling, unfortunately. If you don't fit into their box, you're pretty much out of luck. I have two kids in public school right now (after homeschooling them for several years) and one is an outside of the box thinker who leans toward the artistic side of life and the other is all about performance in school. I'm actually more concerned about the latter. Yes, she'll do well in public school, but will she be end up being an independent thinker, or a robot?

Oh...and I'll be the one parent to ruin the school's perfect API record of 100% of kids tested. I'm exercising my right to opt them out of standardized testing.

I (fortunately) don't have to write standardized tests. But is it an inevitabliity that a standardized test will end up testing how well teachers teach the test? Or is it just that we have low quality tests?

I (fortunately) don't have to write standardized tests. But is it an inevitabliity that a standardized test will end up testing how well teachers teach the test? Or is it just that we have low quality tests?

My point in agreeing with that was the fact that with the huge emphasis on standardized testing, there is little to no time left to teach other things. The teachers have to cover X,Y and Z by a certain time in order to keep on track to get these kids ready for spring testing and that often leaves no time for art, music, field trips and physical education. The teachers have no time to get creative in their teaching and take extra time to get hands on and spend a little extra time on a method that would surely get through the the kids, it's all about cramming as much of this test prep into the day as possible and I think that the kids are being shortchanged because of it.

the kids are being shortchanged because of it.

:beer:

Too many factors not taken into account. They also only test progress relative to that particular year in that particular test.

I haven't been in a primary education classroom recently, but if what Brandy describes is the norm, then that's a sad state of affairs. :( That's hardly the education I remember getting.

With regard to the SATs, this type of standardized test was created to identify the best prepared / most qualified college applicants and thus make college admissions more meritocratic and less a factor of family connections and social prejudices. As such, they were never intended as a measure of innate aptitude, such as an IQ test.

They played no small role in the increase in admissions for previously discriminated against applicants (e.g., jews, asians, women). Standardized test are still the the number 1 predicter of college performance and the number 2 predicter of law school performance (number 1 being a high GPA from a competitive college).

The tests are being changed for political reasons, not because they don't do what they're supposed to do.

The thing I hate about standardized tests is that eventually the school evolves in to teaching for the test, not to learn what you need to learn.

I'm seeing a lot of NO replies

What else can you do besides test?

Why dont we test the teachers?

While I think that all testing is discriminatory, in that it separates people into categories, I'm actually in favor of the existing standardized tests as used for school applications. I think they're an interesting metaphor for the rest of life in general. Why? Because they teach you the lesson of learning to figure out the unwritten rules in life. I don't think any of the other later challenges in life present themselves in such an obvious and easily surmountable way.

So these first lessons can be viewed as an inefficient and arbitrary way of grouping students into categories, or it can be seen as a framework and map in dealing with life's challenges. The format of the solution looks kinda like this:

1. you are at one place in life and want to get to different destination
2. you have a challenge in an admittance test that asks for A, B, C (knowledge, facts, etc.)
3. you figure out shortcut of path 1->2->3 that gets you high scores on the "test"
4. you get to your destination

The SATs are a classic and easy example of this. Sure you can study like crazy for 4-years and hopefully you've covered enough extra knowledge in addition to A,B,C simply because you have no idea what will be on that next test. Or you can learn techniques and shortcuts that allows you to derive the answers from a much smaller subset of information. Either way, you get to your goals. However, there is a certain number, and I assert a majority, that simply have not had the shear brute-force of time and brain-power to learn everything between A-Z. These would best learn the shortcuts 1-2-3.

Later in life, you'll encounter challenges of job-interviews, dating, navigating career-advancements, negotiating pay-raises, haggling over car-prices, wheeling & dealing over a home-purchase, etc. All these moments in life appear to have an overt prescribed "path". However, there's also an implicit and hidden "shortcut" that will give you those same results without requiring so much effort. Learning to play the "hidden rules" of life starts with taking those standardized tests in school... ;)