The article, “Cheating report confirms teacher 's suspicions,” examines the Atlanta Public School system’s Georgia state Criterion Reference Competency Test scandal. CNN author, Paul Frysh, discusses former East Lake Elementary school teacher, Julie Rogers-Martin, account of events involving her fellow colleague’s involvement in the artificial inflation of their students’ standardized test scores in attempts to fulfill the requirements necessary for continued federal funding, job security, as well as bonuses. The economic idea that figures prominently in the article is Incentive, particularly the positive aspect of financial rewards and the negative aspect of fraud and depriving the most vulnerable groups of children their right to an education. In an ethical sense, I believe that the economic foundation of Opportunity Cost applies as well …show more content…
In my opinion, public educational curriculums and accountability guidelines should be established at the state and local levels where parents/guardians play an integral role in the decision making process. I do not believe standardized tests alone are an accurate measure of a student’s knowledge; their classwork, projects, and literary works also represent a student’s talent and capabilities. In agreement with Robert Schaeffer, a representative for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, that federal mandated programs such as the No Child Left Behind and The Race to The Top high-stakes tests foster the temptation to cheat because they serve as means to both punish and reward students, teachers, and principals based solely upon test scores (Schaeffer,
The reader observes how, in this case, the incentives of money and success caused teachers to go against what is right and cheat. Bagels, a completely unrelated subject to teachers, is another topic that Levitt and Dubner present in the text in order to show that even rich individuals who may not have to worry about the incentive of money still conduct themselves in a erroneous manner and commit “white-collar crime” (46) by not paying for bagels in the workplace. There are many other topics even more diverse than school teachers and bagels that are discussed in Freakonomics, but even with this variability, the purpose Levitt and Dubner are proving is shown in each
Since the passage of No Child Left Behind Act 12 years ago, teachers are judged based on standardized tests and their students’ scores. The tests are often used as a measure for schools to determine if teachers should keep their jobs. The whole teaching profession is being shamed as inadequate. Joe Nocera, opinion columnist for the New York Times newspaper, by examining a thinker named Marc Tucker, argues for a new way to approach educational reform. To begin with, Nocera addresses reforming and reconstructing our current schools.
LITERATURE REVIEW #1: The Prize In the book, The Prize, written by Dale Russakoff discusses the issues urban schools face with the limits of money and a top-down approach in how to run the schooling system. The book is based of Newark schools, and starts off with New Jersey politicians Cory Booker and Chris Christie who are troubled with the $100 million pledge from Mark Zuckerberg to transform the Newark school. Money is limited to reform education, even more so with the top-down autocracy of the locally elected officials who are not allowing reform to take place. The book further describes the situations in the Newark school, with the problems of poverty and violence at the forefront of it all.
I applaud the American Evaluation Association (AEA) in taking a strong stance on the deleterious effects of high stakes testing, especially going so far as to promulgate their reasons and concerns. It is obvious from the statement that the AEA supports the importance of testing and accountability in improving education, but finds the current testing manipulation environment to be harmful for any positive improvements in education. Specifically, how the monolithic testing focus has increased dropout rates, created cultural insensitivity, turned the community against teachers and administrators, and driven curriculum writing with a myopic focus, of teaching to the test. In addition, the AEA highlights other adverse effects of narrowing the focus
Last week President Obama announced that he believes the school in america should have less standardized tests. President Obama says “students are spending too much time in the classroom taking tests, many of them unnecessary, and urged officials in the country’s schools to take steps to administer fewer and more meaningful exams.” The white house agrees by saying “a problem the administration acknowledged it has played a role in — has taken away too much valuable time that could be better spent on learning, teaching and fostering creativity in schools. To curb excessive testing, Obama recommended limiting standardized exams to no more than 2% of a student's instructional time in the classroom.” This would allow the student to spend more
Proponents see standardized testing as a way of making testing more efficient and effective by minimizing cost and increasing people’s accountability for their performance in the system. Opponents on the other hand argue that the systems has limitations based on its very nature on what can be tested and as a result of these standards needing to be met sacrifice some very important aspects of students education experience as well as force onto students and teachers a one size fits all model that has failed to deliver on its promises. After having reviewed all the evidence in detail it becomes clear to me that standardized testing is not an effective system for educating students and does more bad than good
As a result, some schools are finding it tough to score above average on these test giving teachers no option, but to focus solely on learning outcomes that meet high stake test requirements. Additionally, students with low test score were always pressured by their teacher to achieve high test, scores and when they did not produce higher results, some educator, believed, if they punished the student they would become more serious with schooling and work hard to avoid the pressure or humiliating punishments (Hurley, 2007). I used to be an advocate of high stakes testing, but now I oppose high stakes testing sine I have seen first hand myself the damage it does to a student. Also, I several educators and professional use high stakes test results as a single indicator for measuring a person's competence or determining their future outcome, even though research has proven these tests is highly
Like Barry Bonds on steroids, the overemphasis on standardized learning and assessments has distorted the true meaning of learning. Even if limited data was made available to “demonstrate” the efficacy of high stakes testing on improving math and reading scores, the negative implications behind testing are never taken into consideration. The very real practical result of years of NCLB-type reforms is that the intellectual life has been squeezed out of classrooms. The phrase “high standards” (or rigorous) by definition refers to standards that everyone won’t be able to meet.
Standardized tests are very common in today’s modern society. They are used as a tool to measure a person’s performance and indicate how their estimated performance will be in a college class. Every year hundreds of students take the ACT or SAT in order to get accepted into their college of choice and to receive scholarships, but they fail to see the problems with these standardized tests. As more and more people take these tests, the national average score falls causing doubt in the extremely important system. This is leading people to question whether or not the ACT and SATs are accomplishing what they were created to do.
The authors then introduce the topic of high-stakes testing, which increases a teacher’s incentive for cheating. If a teacher has students that receive poor test scores, the teacher can be passed over for a raise. In extension, if the whole school does not do well then federal funding can be withheld and the teacher could be fired. Teachers can also receive positive incentives for their students to perform better on the high-stakes testing, which include promises of promotions and bonuses (Levitt & Dubner, 2009).
Levine claims that schools are starting to expand the quality of the student body by the rate of the students standardized test (22). Colleges are not looking to get students who do not apply themselves, but also, colleges are making it harder for the poor students that are trying to better their education. Along the same lines, Graff reminds us of the competition of comparing test scores in school (249). Graff explains, in school scores are made up by one’s reading ability, instead of, like in sports, the actual competition itself or arguing (249). Overall schools are using test scores as a way to compete with education instead of looking out for the best interests of the
The state of Texas has been in a constant struggle within itself over just how to evaluate education, and standardized testing in Texas has been a major influencer in terms of the state’s standards for over thirty years. Though these methods of testing have been utilized for decades, resentment to the tests have been continuously rising among educators, parents, and students, but not everyone agrees. Despite government officials trying to quell these protests with changes to administration, and the way the test itself is formatted and formulated, there seems to have been little to no improvement made and those opposing the tests have started calling for an end to all standardized testing. For one to truly understand this ongoing struggle, one must first look at standardized testing’s beginning, then how government today is trying to fix the broken system, and finally consider the opinions of notable figures in the testing world.
As a student in high school did you ever feel like the standardized test are helping you or making you get in to a better college? Have you ever thought about how many hours students and teachers spend preparing for the standardized test? Many hours and studying are being put into those test but are they really effective and are the test doing the students good in life? Standardized tests are really just to effective, teachers and students spend too much time on them and it’s not doing the students any good, and even it’s not doing the teachers any good. Standardized tests in schools today in Ohio should be stopped because they are causing for teachers to be evaluated by the test results of how the students do on the tests, they are having the students more stressed about school and do they benefit you in colleges and university and do they really look at how well students do on them test.
The state tried to force this child, Ethan, to take this test. In the meantime while Andrea was fighting the school system, Ethan Rediske passed away. It doesn’t have to be this way. Our children aren’t all dying of terrible diseases, but these standardized testing is killing our brothers and sisters creativity and passion for school instead. Standardized tests do not accurately measure what students know and what they can do, nor are they accurate predictors of future success
In Diana Ravitch’s ‘(2010) article Why I Changed My Mind, she discussed how abiding by an educational system using accountability and choice has failed tremendously in America. In addition, Ravitch explained how the federally ordained policies are continuously contributing to the system’s decline as well. She believes the legislators are so focused on testing and teacher evaluation that they are ignoring the root of educational problems faced in the United States. With such strong emphasis on testing and test results, educators have changed their teaching strategies in an attempt to satisfy this broken structure. There is strong attention to preparing students to pass standardized tests while simultaneously denying teachers the time to focus