State Testing
Testing, Testing, And More Testing
In all the years before students have went through school learning at all different levels and they would constantly advance without knowing if they had learned what needed to be learned or not. They did this until they got into jr. high/ high school and had end of semester exams and would fail which meant they were held back or didn’t graduate at all that year. We have to ask ourselves if it was really failing or was it the system failing them all the years before is. This is when standardized testing came about in grade schools to start testing the knowledge of the kids a lot earlier. When this came up there were a lot of mixed feelings, they thought this would punish the children that didn’t test well or that the teachers and schools would then focus on the test as a curriculum and they may not learn everything they need to. Others thought the testing was a great idea to insure their children were learning the information at school and that they were actually absorbing it. To me these benchmark tests raise the bar not only for student to learn but for the school system to teach so how could this not be doing more good than bad. In the past couple years people have been finding flaws in the latest TAKS test which lead to a lot of up roar. In 2006, Walter Stroup, a UT professor said he found a huge flaw in the test and was out to prove it. He set up an experiment where he had middle school students enrolled in a Dallas-area math pilot program for a year. The students began to show marked improvement in their understanding of mathematical concepts. By the end of the year, however, their scores had increased only marginally on state standardized Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tests. He then went back and looked at all the students scored in the years before and they were lower but not by the amount he thought they should be since he saw how much the students had improved. He made this known to Pearsons who designs
In all the years before students have went through school learning at all different levels and they would constantly advance without knowing if they had learned what needed to be learned or not. They did this until they got into jr. high/ high school and had end of semester exams and would fail which meant they were held back or didn’t graduate at all that year. We have to ask ourselves if it was really failing or was it the system failing them all the years before is. This is when standardized testing came about in grade schools to start testing the knowledge of the kids a lot earlier. When this came up there were a lot of mixed feelings, they thought this would punish the children that didn’t test well or that the teachers and schools would then focus on the test as a curriculum and they may not learn everything they need to. Others thought the testing was a great idea to insure their children were learning the information at school and that they were actually absorbing it. To me these benchmark tests raise the bar not only for student to learn but for the school system to teach so how could this not be doing more good than bad. In the past couple years people have been finding flaws in the latest TAKS test which lead to a lot of up roar. In 2006, Walter Stroup, a UT professor said he found a huge flaw in the test and was out to prove it. He set up an experiment where he had middle school students enrolled in a Dallas-area math pilot program for a year. The students began to show marked improvement in their understanding of mathematical concepts. By the end of the year, however, their scores had increased only marginally on state standardized Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tests. He then went back and looked at all the students scored in the years before and they were lower but not by the amount he thought they should be since he saw how much the students had improved. He made this known to Pearsons who designs
Cited: Page “Texas State Standardized Tests May Have Serious Design Flaw.” The Huffman Post (2012) Retrieved September 18, 2010, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/30/ut-austin-professor-walte_n_1720782.html “STAAR to Replace TAKS.” Texas Education Agency (2010) Retrieved October 1, 2012, from http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=7874 This article tells you of the difference between the TAKS test and the new STARR test that Texas is using Weissert, Will. (June 19, 2012) “Texas Lawmaker Pan First Year Of STAAR Test.” Houston Chronicle Hamilton, Laura S., Brian M “An Overview Of The History Of Public Education In Texas. “ TEA (2010) Retrieved Nov. 5 2012 http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=148 This article is a complete history of where testing came from and how it keeps changing for the better