• Trouble logging in? Send us a message with your username and/or email address for help.
New posts

Teresa

SoWal Guide
Staff member
Nov 15, 2004
30,249
9,279
South Walton, FL
sowal.com
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

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:

  1. 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.
  2. When teachers know what is likely to be asked on a test they may concentrate on that information, skimming over the larger body
  3. of information that may be as important or more important than the skills the students may be tested on.
  4. Standardized tests tend to measure recall of factual information more than higher-level thinking and problem-solving skills.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
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.
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
 
Last edited:

Kurt

Admin
Staff member
Oct 15, 2004
2,233
4,925
SoWal
mooncreek.com
Thanks for posting this. Schools should be teaching children HOW to learn...not WHAT to learn.

Exactly! I heard there was no critical thinking being taught anymore. And what does it say when a kid hates school or that it's boring, or doesn't feel safe?

I know there are lots of good educators out there. It seems they are trapped in a system that doesn't always make sense.
 

Jdarg

SoWal Expert
Feb 15, 2005
18,068
1,973
I think even a shift of focus on the standardized testing would be a big help. Currently, the "style" is to talk up the FCAT (or whatever your state test may be)- from the first day of school. For example, by Septemebr, all 4th graders and their parents are whipped into a frenzy about the 4th grade FCAT writing. Come January, FCAT news tidbits start appearing in the school newsletters. Your kid starts coming home and saying she has to "pass the FCAT to be promoted". A couple of weks before you are instructed to feed your children a breakfast of test-taking champions every morning during FCAT week and make sure they get lots of sleep (I guess they think we don't do this the other weeks of the year). THEN- you walk your kid into class on the first day of tests- and all the kids are nervous wrecks, and the teachers even worse.

When we were in school, we had standardized tests. What we didn't have was the big build-up, pressure, pep rallies, and candy bags. We showed up to school, and for a few days of the school year, part of the day was testing. I don't ever remember really knowing about it in advance, and we did other class work the rest of the day instead of completely suspending instruction during test week. Never a stressful moment.

I would love to see Walton County try something novel- not make a big deal about these tests with the kids. IMO- they shouldn't be exposed to the stress part of these tests that is brought on by the big hoopla created by the school systems, administrations, and sadly trickles down to the teachers. I wonder how kids would do if they knew nothing about these tests, and they were casually administered near the end of the year, in bits and pieces. I bet public school life would get a little saner.
 

Kurt

Admin
Staff member
Oct 15, 2004
2,233
4,925
SoWal
mooncreek.com
I think even a shift of focus on the standardized testing would be a big help. Currently, the "style" is to talk up the FCAT (or whatever your state test may be)- from the first day of school. For example, by Septemebr, all 4th graders and their parents are whipped into a frenzy about the 4th grade FCAT writing. Come January, FCAT news tidbits start appearing in the school newsletters. Your kid starts coming home and saying she has to "pass the FCAT to be promoted". A couple of weks before you are instructed to feed your children a breakfast of test-taking champions every morning during FCAT week and make sure they get lots of sleep (I guess they think we don't do this the other weeks of the year). THEN- you walk your kid into class on the first day of tests- and all the kids are nervous wrecks, and the teachers even worse.

When we were in school, we had standardized tests. What we didn't have was the big build-up, pressure, pep rallies, and candy bags. We showed up to school, and for a few days of the school year, part of the day was testing. I don't ever remember really knowing about it in advance, and we did other class work the rest of the day instead of completely suspending instruction during test week. Never a stressful moment.

I would love to see Walton County try something novel- not make a big deal about these tests with the kids. IMO- they shouldn't be exposed to the stress part of these tests that is brought on by the big hoopla created by the school systems, administrations, and sadly trickles down to the teachers. I wonder how kids would do if they knew nothing about these tests, and they were casually administered near the end of the year, in bits and pieces. I bet public school life would get a little saner.


Yes - to test on an average day with no notice would give you accurate results to be able to really compare classes. I guess that's part of the common sense approach that's been lost with rules and regs.

Is it true that teacher salary decisions are made on the results of these test?
 

Goddessgal

Beach Lover
Mar 28, 2007
187
45
Florida!
Yes - it will be true soon, according to recent FL legislation - no matter if they teach any of the tested subjects or grade levels or not (art, music, kindergarten, PE, teachers, etc). Teachers are already under intense pressure about these. Trust me, they are not fans of the big build-up, pressure, etc either.

Also, participating in Race to the Top (which Walton Co. is) is highly dependent on standardized testing.

On critical thinking skills: teachers are also required to prove how they incorporate them in their curriculum and lesson plans, as they are part of the Accomplished Practices on which they are evaluated annually.
 

scooterbug44

SoWal Expert
May 8, 2007
16,732
3,330
Sowal
The massive standardized test cheating scandal in Atlanta really shows why such a focus on just test scores is bad.

It sounds like the FCAT prep is akin to the AP prep we did in high school. But even in those cases we were trying to learn as much basic and general knowledge in that subject as possible, which is why this idea of "teaching to the test" confuses me.
 

Goddessgal

Beach Lover
Mar 28, 2007
187
45
Florida!
Tests like FCAT measure specific skill sets, instead of general knowledge. IMO, these were designed to be tools for assessment (curriculum and general trends in student data, indicators of student needs) instead of achievement tests - which is how they are being utilized.

By the way, FCAT is only one of several mandated standardized assessment tests that students are doing throughout the year.
 

scooterbug44

SoWal Expert
May 8, 2007
16,732
3,330
Sowal
I just don't understand how you "teach to the test" UNLESS you know the exact questions on the test and are having your students memorize those answers.

Otherwise testing a specific skill set is still a test of general knowledge. You either know how to do a type of math problem, punctuation, spelling rules, how to read at a certain level, and what happened at a time in history, or you don't.
 
New posts


Sign Up for SoWal Newsletter