S/O - Standardized Testing - Good/Bad/Useful
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Anonymous
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Typically I here on these boards and elsewhere that there is too much testing and we should move away from it. On the other hand, in this "HGC debate" about criteria to enter the magnet there is a strong contingent of people who seem to think the test is the end all be all. Which is it?
Is testing in general bad but useful only for certain circumstances like determining giftedness? |
Anonymous
| No, life and schools test , everything is a test in life |
Anonymous
| Some of the weaker students would not master the basics and be college-ready without testing - or without the resulting pressure put on teachers/schools to achieve stated results. |
Anonymous
It's both, of course! Standardized testing is bad, except for when it benefits my children. Or, anyway, that's the prevailing thinking on DCUM. |
Anonymous
| As long as they are not just trying to strictly teach to the test, or there's way too much of it, I see no problem with it. It has its uses. It's a more quantifiable measure of how a kid is doing within a given year. Sometimes, it's hard to know how your kid is doing with just grades, especially in MCPS where a P grade in elementary grades can be a very wide range. |
Anonymous
that's the prevailing thinking in life |
Anonymous
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I think standardized testing has it's place where it provides something measurable. And you would hope be equivalent across the board.
So there's nothing like grade bias and lets you compare different schools. (again, ideally) But it shouldn't take the place of instruction. Where a lot of complaints more recently is the amount of testing that could go on in a school year. Even worse if the school year is shortened due to something like snow days. So the testing has to be done and that means it takes away from instruction time. And it shouldn't be used as the only indicator on how a student is doing. And I would guess standardized testing would help students sort of prepare for other standardized tests that they may choose to take later. Such as the College Board exams, ACT, PSAT, SAT, AP exams, etc. |
Anonymous
Except that it isn't. Things in life can be "testing" but there are no tests once you graduate. |
Anonymous
| I'm a teacher and it seems like we test as much as we teach. It is excessive but some of it has its value. Testing that can give teachers instant results are actually useful and worthy of the time. Testing that takes months to score is a waste of time and effort IMO. I'm an ESOL teacher and we test our students in January/February each year. We usually get the results in mid May just in time for the end of the school year! By the time school begins in Aug/Sept, those test scores are no longer accurate. We spend a few weeks administering our tests. We do not teach during those weeks. So our students miss out on weeks of instruction for us to get our results at the end of the year. |
Anonymous
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Depends what testing you are talking about
PARCC = useless MAP testing = useful if you manage to get the results which can be difficult magnet tests = useful. I see no other accurate way to gauge intelligence and learning ability In-view = useful information for parents even though school doesn't seem to use it for anything |
Anonymous
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this is 19:49 again. forgot one
M-class reading testing = useless (as teacher says they don't teach for weeks while this is ongoing) |
Anonymous
| It is imperfect at best. And things like PARCC tend to hurt the students they are supposed to help and are a giant waste of time for everyone else. |
Anonymous
The ACCESS test can kind of considered to be an EOY test and shouldn't be used to base current year curriculum for a student. For example students who met the exit criteria on the test are exited at the end of the school year. So it's not like if the scores came any sooner, like it's say in March or April, the student would be exited immediately after receiving the score. Similar in some school systems the ESOL level for the student next year is determined by the previous year's ACCESS score. |
Anonymous
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Parents of kids with poor test scores/results will say, it doesn't tell anything and, therefore, it's useless.
Parents of kids with good test scores/results will say, it's an excellent measure of identifying gifted/talented/magnet kids. So, the argument continues in circle. |
Anonymous
Many jobs have a technical test |