Against standardized testing
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It is now commonplace for school districts to use standardized testing in order to meet state and federal requirements. It has also become a tool to determine if children are ready to enter school, track them into instructional groups, diagnose for a learning disability, and decide whether to promote, retain in grade, or graduate many students. Schools, such as mine, also use these tests to guide and control curriculum content and teaching methods. These tests do not qualify to serve as the sole or primary basis for important educational decisions.
In many school districts, such as mine, political and financial turmoil has made raising
test scores the single most important indicator of school status and improvement, not to mention its very survival. As a result, teachers and administrators feel enormous pressure to ensure that the test scores increase. Instead of being accountable to parents, community, and school board, teachers become accountable to a completely unregulated test industry. With the trend toward accountability through test scores, schools must change the curriculum to match the test, and teachers must teach only what is covered on the test. Tests that teachers give on a regular basis begin to resemble the standardized tests which does lead to improved test taking skills; but does raising test scores really mean improvement in academic performance? Teaching to the test narrows the curriculum and forces students to memorize facts rather than developing fundamental and higher order abilities...