Random Essay
Daryl Ayers
Mary Hanlin
ENG 112 – This You Believe
19 February, 2013
This You Believe Many people claim that standardized testing is unfair to students as a whole due the style in which the test is given. While this is similar to the beliefs of Shaheen Soorani; it is not the same. Shaheen Soorani is a public school teacher from Norfolk, Virginia. He has been teaching history at the senior level for the past six years at Granby High School. When interviewed about standardized testing he expressed that in his opinion standardized testing does not test that a student is knowledgeable in a subject, but rather tests their ability to use deductive reasoning and choose the response that seems to be best fitting. In addition to this, his responses seemed contradictory to what responses and opinions that I have heard from most others in that past. The first question I asked in his interview was basic, but allowed me to turn the interview in a direction that would allow more in depth responses and reasoning. When asked if he believed if standardized testing was fair or not he responded as follows “yes, but not in the way most assume it would be.” He then proceeded to explain that standardized tests put a student in a situation where a small amount of background knowledge and a high level of problem solving skills can be used to get high scores on tests that are supposed to examine knowledge. He was of the opinion that these tests investigate the level of test taking skills a student has, but not the strength of their knowledge in the subject field. In his opinion it seemed clear that these test are inherently fair because everyone is given the same test, but these tests are not fair the testing of knowledge that they are created to achieve. Given that these tests are technically equal because they are the same but do not test knowledge as they should I inquired as to how they could remain fair, yet change the information and skills that are being tested to
Mary Hanlin
ENG 112 – This You Believe
19 February, 2013
This You Believe Many people claim that standardized testing is unfair to students as a whole due the style in which the test is given. While this is similar to the beliefs of Shaheen Soorani; it is not the same. Shaheen Soorani is a public school teacher from Norfolk, Virginia. He has been teaching history at the senior level for the past six years at Granby High School. When interviewed about standardized testing he expressed that in his opinion standardized testing does not test that a student is knowledgeable in a subject, but rather tests their ability to use deductive reasoning and choose the response that seems to be best fitting. In addition to this, his responses seemed contradictory to what responses and opinions that I have heard from most others in that past. The first question I asked in his interview was basic, but allowed me to turn the interview in a direction that would allow more in depth responses and reasoning. When asked if he believed if standardized testing was fair or not he responded as follows “yes, but not in the way most assume it would be.” He then proceeded to explain that standardized tests put a student in a situation where a small amount of background knowledge and a high level of problem solving skills can be used to get high scores on tests that are supposed to examine knowledge. He was of the opinion that these tests investigate the level of test taking skills a student has, but not the strength of their knowledge in the subject field. In his opinion it seemed clear that these test are inherently fair because everyone is given the same test, but these tests are not fair the testing of knowledge that they are created to achieve. Given that these tests are technically equal because they are the same but do not test knowledge as they should I inquired as to how they could remain fair, yet change the information and skills that are being tested to
Cited: Soorani, Shaheen. Personal interview. 14 Feb. 2013