Thank you DeLene Sholes, local educator (retired Walton County teacher, principal & administrator), and writer, for writing this article about today's schools and testing. It is short and sweet and covers the main points about these issues.
teacherprincipal.com
teacherprincipal.com
Schools Rely Too Much on Test Scores
Written By: DeLene Sholes - Jul• 12•11
Teachers give achievement tests to satisfy local, state, and national requirements. They must also give tests to find out whether their students are prepared to pass the big ones. Of course they also have to give daily or weekly tests on the subjects they teach so they can report their students’ progress to parents.
Standardized Tests and School Effectiveness
Tests are supposedly objective measures, and relatively easy to understand, but schools sometimes give them too much importance. Some of the problems with relying too much on tests to judge school effectiveness are:
The purpose of instruction should be to facilitate learning, not to get good test scores. When too much emphasis is placed on test results and too little attention is given to other indicators of school effectiveness, children are the losers. Test scores are only one of many measures of a school’s success. All of them deserve attention.
- With too much emphasis on scores there is a tendency to teach to the test, or to teach what is expected to be measured on the test.
- When teachers know what is likely to be asked on a test they may concentrate on that information, skimming over the larger body
- of information that may be as important or more important than the skills the students may be tested on.
- Standardized tests tend to measure recall of factual information more than higher-level thinking and problem-solving skills.
- Information in today’s world is growing and changing so fast that students cannot learn the vast amount of information available to them through print and non-print materials.
- Today’s students have to learn where to find the information they need and how to use print materials and technology to find answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.
- Many of the skills that students need today cannot be easily measured by paper and pencil tests, and cannot be taught through drill and practice.
Reading Activities for Primary Grades: Phonemes, Word Attack, and Comprehension Skills e-book by DeLene Sholes at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Reading+Activities+for+Primary+Grades%3A+Phonemes%2C+Word+Attack%2C+and+Comprehension+Skills&x=8&y=18
Posted in Education Issues, The Principal's Desk
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