Mercurial Musings: Too Much Testing?

Standardized testing continues to be a controversial subject in education. On the one hand, it is necessary to assess what students are learning and the effectiveness of instruction. On the other, it is impossible for a single test to accurately reflect the complexities of the education process. One test cannot show the student who hated to write at the beginning of the school year who progressed to independently constructing complete paragraphs. One test cannot show the student who never enjoyed reading who finally found her niche and read five books outside of school this year. One test cannot reflect all those little moments in the classroom that add up to huge individual gains. Further, testing tends to focus only on the subjects of English/Language Arts and Math, thereby ignoring entire subjects in which students may excel. In many districts, standardized test prep courses have taken the places of academic electives like creative writing, public speaking, journalism, and poetry.

Increasingly, student test scores are being tied to teacher evaluations. Which leads to the dilemma of how to assess teachers who teach untested subjects. Unfortunately, the answer is typically to implement more standardized testing. The problem with this is manifold, but primarily rests in the fact that most careers our students will have upon leaving college will require them to be able to think creatively and outside the box. They are jobs in the fields of science and technology that will require students to be able to imagine and create, not just regurgitate rote information and memorized facts.?

Of course, this is a complex dilemma, one that cannot be sufficiently summarized in a short blog entry. My hope is to encourage discourse. We know the problems with standardized testing, but we also know it is necessary to measure student progress. What then are our options? If not standardized tests, then what? I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts.

Source: http://www.mymercurialmusings.com/2013/01/too-much-testing.html

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