High Stakes Assessment Case Study

The silence in the room, with only the sound a pencil makes with the paper, produces the heart-thumping atmosphere standardized testing gives to students. Most students experience the overwhelming stress that is brought upon their academic life from SAT, ACT, or any standardized tests. They see them as one of the most important factors for college acceptance. The constant worry that sits on their shoulders will not disappear until testing is over, and there is nothing they can do about it until they hopefully get a letter from their dream college.

Do you get nervous before taking a test? On March 14, 2002, the Sacremento Bee reported that "test related jitters are so common that the Stanford 9 exam comes with instructions on what to do with a test booklet if the student vomits on it. The use of standerdizd testing has been implemented into American schools since the 1800's. The United States dropped from 18th in math internationally to 27th in 2012. The blame is being set on a few different things, including poverty levels going up, teacher quality, and standerdized testing.

A teacher’s perspective can often be overlooked in terms of inclusion and the implementation in the general education classroom. There is discrepancy between the perspectives of general education teachers and special education teachers. Both sets feel like they are underrepresented in the decision-making process for inclusion. According to Buell, Hallam, Gamel-Mccormick, and Scheer in “A Survey of General and Special Education Teachers’ Perceptions and Inservice Needs Concerning Inclusion”, successful collaboration requires that both parties serve as “team members” who both need time for preparation and support (1999, p. 144). Because of the amount of people involved in this process, teachers often feel like their opinions and perspectives

How well do standardized tests actually measure your abilities? Some people support standardized tests, but others are against them. I believe standardized tests are irrelevant because students start to believe they’re stupid, the tests don't improve education overall, and they are used too much to judge how well the students are being taught and learning. The first reason for my belief is that some people start to believe that they are stupid or dumb due to standardized test scores.

There is a Problem with Standardized Testing In today’s education department, the success of a student is determined by their ability to excel on a standardized test. However, society is starting to debate whether standardized tests should actually determine whether a student passes to the next level. In both Anaya Kamenetz’s book and TV documentary, The Test: Why Our Schools Are Obsessed with Standardized Testing but You Don’t Have to Be, she describes problems in within the school system, ultimately leading the corruption and mistrust of the school system. The book review and Book TV have a lot of similarities and differences regarding the way the author’s views are expressed.

The concept of standardized testing has always been difficult for me to comprehend. In my opinion, I believe that standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT give people of different ethnicities and lower economic background a disadvantage. Watching this short video on what SAT really test on individuals has helped me become less anxious about my own SAT scores. I began to think that I was a failure because I am incapable of scoring a high score in most tests that I have taken. The pressure of having SAT or ACT scores as a necessity in order to be considered into most college is overwhelming.

Many parents, educators, and everyday people argue on whether full inclusion or segregated programs are most effective for students with disabilities. In my opinion, it depends on the type of disability. Sometimes children need to work their way up to being in an all inclusive environment. For example: if a child has a hearing impairment but receives something like hearing aids, the child would benefit in a regular class. On the other hand, if a child is blind or dead being in a regular classroom will not benefit them.

Even though many students absolutely hate them, state assessments are a big part of the American education system. Everyone has taken a standardized test at some point in their life, and almost everyone has done poorly on one. They are primarily used as a measurement of how well students learn, but are they truly accurate? There are strong arguments on both sides, which has started a heated conflict about the productiveness of these tests. Standardized testing has been around for many years, starting in Imperial China where it was intended to determine a person’s aptitude for a government position (“Do Standardized Tests Show an Accurate View of Students’ Abilities?”).

I have never done well on test and especially standardized test. In secondary school all of the test seemed very repetitive and useless. When I took those tests, they did not give me any knowledge or helped me in any way. I feel like all of those test were there and we have to take them, because that is what the school is requiring, but it doesn’t measure my knowledge. The standardized tests were very “dry” you could say and I do know that I did not look forward to them.

A Scandalous School System Neglectful, biased, diverting, or, in this case, all of the above. Standardized testing, including not only the SAT but oftentimes a slew of other state-required tests, overwhelms millions of students and educators in the US annually. The mild benefits and insights these tests offer are no comparison to the stress they cause. The unintended side effects these tests produce have been present since they were first put into place, but have dramatically strengthened in the last decade. This instant push-back should serve as a red flag to districts enforcing the tests.