What's black and white? Using "life is hard" as justification to dismiss the problems of a segment of the population strikes me as incredibly weak. It's funny, but you rarely see "life is hard" applied to people who were born into families with some money. I guess life isn't all that hard for them.
We have to have standards. Is the kid who had parents staying home from work to make sure their stuff was done every night a better person? Not really, but frankly life isn't fair. We have to have a standard minimum amount of education to qualify for a diploma, or the diploma becomes meaningless. There is not getting around it. Genetics, environment, bad luck, you cannot give free rides because of that. Most of the things RR mentioned would be moot for the TAKS anyways because if you fail you can repeat it. If you repeatedly fail then the education you received is not up to standards.
Well that seems pretty obvious. I wish I would have had a tutor for SAT and a college coach helping me fill out applications, but too bad I didn't and I went to a state school.
Too much standardized testing or emphasis placed on standardized testing is detrimental to students achieving the best education they get. Part of the problem is the test and they way it's worded as well as subject matter addressed in the questioning. It isn't only the teachers that feel the pressure, it's the administration, principals etc. Everyone feels that pressure. The problem is when testing and test taking over rules critical thinking in the class room. If students are already behind then a lot of what has to happen to do well on standardized teaching is background vocabulary knowledge so that students who are behind won't be thrown off by the wording of the question. That's a shame. Because students who are doubt good critical reasoning, research based learning, will eventually pick up the background vocabulary and catch up, but that won't happen if they are tested out of the better classes in 2nd or 3rd grade in elementary school because they had to build their background vocabulary at the expense of learning the standards we expect our children to learn.
It is my understanding that the work only begins if they fail it the first try. i went through several pages of the math science and social studies questions and din't see any of the things you are talking about here. great, education is important. If they don't have this basic knowledge then they don't have research skills or critical reasoning skills. they might have potential, but no honed skills. That is like saying a guy who started playing piano a week ago shouldn't play scales, or a guy learning to play drums shouldn't run drills. If they don't have this core knowledge of science, math and social studies intact then whatever "critical reasoning" you guys are crying about seems worthless to me. You have to learn the basic language before you write poetry.
I don't think you understand what I'm talking about when I'm talking about background knowledge as well as how tests are written in order to assess skills. Each question is written to assess how well the child knows a particular skill, but if their lack of background knowledge keeps them from understanding the question that skill isn't appropriately assessed based on the students ability. If the test has passages that talk about things like riding a bike in the park but the students are from neighborhoods where it's unsafe to be out and they don't have bikes, then they are at a disadvantage if they were asked to write about that. That doesn't mean they can't have critical reasoning skills or aren't capable of doing research on a project. Their writing would be effected even if they were great writers ordinarily. If the students are second language learners and the question starts asking them about the differences between limes and lemons when one word in Spanish can cover both words in English they are at a disadvantage. They may still have great skills when it comes to compare and contrast, but will be at a disadvantage because of background they don't know. A question that asks students about something they read may ask about a passage, a selection, a story, an article, an essay, etc. It seems easy to us to understand that it's talking about something read but it isn't necessarily easy for a second language learner to understand all of those words. That puts them at a disadvantage. So when schools spend their time studying how tests are written, and teaching background knowledge just so their kids can have close to the same access to the questions that leaves less time to teach the actual skills being assessed as well as the critical reasoning, and research skills that would prove so beneficial. Because a student who is in elementary may be at a disadvantage on questions like I mentioned above but that doesn't mean they can't learn critical reasoning skills, and research skills. If they are allowed to that they will catch up on synonyms for reading, differences between words that are in a new language and don't have a direct relation to a word in their language etc. I have no problem with them taking the tests, and learning test taking strategies because those help. But they shouldn't come at the expense of learning more important skills. The weight placed on those assessments shouldn't pressure schools, or teachers to neglect the other skills that are so important to education.
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I've got a question... How do you think the states or feds could allocate funding and other resources if they don't have standardized testing to identify the outstanding problem areas?
No one has suggested no standardized testing at all. From the article you posted: Obama, who is pushing a rewrite of the nation's education law that would ease some of its rigid measurement tools, said policymakers should find a test that "everybody agrees makes sense" and administer it in less pressure-packed atmospheres, potentially every few years instead of annually. They are suggesting reducing the increased focus on standardized testing that happens when you test every year and essentially force teachers to teach to the test. When I was growing up, we'd take standardized tests every maybe 3 or 4 times over 12 years. It served as a measurement tool and could be used to evaluate and track school performance, but did not drive everything else we did.
Yikes. Easier said than done. Can you imagine all the special interest/racial/ethnic/religious/political/creationism/evolutionism/gay/straight groups that will no doubt claim the tests are biased towards their idealogical opponents?
The problem with standardized tests is that teachers tend to be more concerned with hammering into their kids heads how to answer questions that come in a certain format only. It's like teaching somebody to memorize something versus having them learn about why it is that way. Memorization does not produce critical thinkers.
Education begins at home. kids who have parents (in a lot of cases, only one parent) that don't care about the child's education and only treat school as day care are bound to be apathetic themselves. i hear it every day from my g/f, who is a teacher. she hates teaching to the test and the fact that it's the end-all be-all.
It could be done by being proactive rather than reactive. Maybe start by identifying what America is going to need to continue to compete and even dominate the global economy. Taylor that to the needs of individual regions, states, cities and neighborhoods. Then fund it.
Agreed - I think that part is a bit ridiculous. There's no way to have a standardized test that's really going to be considered fair by everyone.
I never took those TAKS tests but from what my siblings and friends have told me, you have to be a complete moron to not pass I don't like standardized tests and don't think they are effective at accomplishing much of anything in terms of education, but until crappy teachers are held more accountable, this is the only way to keep the kids accountable for something, even if that something is only the marginally important things from the standardized tests Public school classrooms have become a complete joke More pressure and competitive environments need to be implemented into the classroom
maybe to a degree but teachers are as much if not more to blame, good teachers can make kids wanna learn, but far too many are just as apathetic as the parents
A teacher cannot "make" kids want to learn. A good teacher is very similar to a coach, they should provide the students with everything they need to learn. Put them in a situation to succeed. The rest is up to the kids and the parents.
My close friend grew up in the US and he's always on about how easy school was in America compared to private schools in Dubai. He thinks the main problem is that most tests are multiple choice, and you can almost always rule out 50% of the answers, which means you have a chance at 50% just by showing up. Is that true? This is probably about 15 years ago though.
