A school board member from Florida took his states standardized test for math and reading. He said the math section had 60 questions and he knew NONE of the answers but he managed to guess 10 of them correctly. On the reading test he scored a 62%. He said in his school system that’s a “D” and it would get him a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading. He also said that it seems there is something seriously wrong. He has a Bachelor of Science degree, two master’s degrees, and 15 credit hours towards a doctorate; and yet he COULDN’T pass these two tests!!
He says that if he had been required to take those two tests when he was a 10th grader, his life would certainly be different. He believes he would have been told he wasn’t college material, he would have believed it, and he would have looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said he had.
“I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.” (This quote was the person who took the test) I believe this right here sums up a lot of my frustration with standardized testing. What is the point in shoving irrelevant information into students IF it isn’t something they are ever going to use or need “in the real world.” In my opinion standardized testing practices are pushed by GREEDY testing companies! These tests are not the be-all and end-all to our students’ existence. Yes, they need to be tested, I agree with that, but the standardized tests are not the best way for all students’!!
“It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions? As subject-matter specialists, how qualified were they to make general judgments about the needs of this state’s children in a future they can’t possibly predict? Who set the pass-fail “cut score”? How?” (Another quote from him) This is another point he has that I agree with. I would like to know the answers to these questions as well. I know I took tests when I was in school and they were nerve-wracking to me, but the ones our children and students’ face now are just ridiculous.
I think the government, politicians, and many other people make too big of a deal out of these tests. I think all of them should be “forced” to take these tests and see just how much of it that they know! I don’t think because students’ fail these tests that they are “dumb” or can’t learn. I know for a fact that not all students are good test takers but they make good grades in class. I wish parents, the Department of Education, and school boards would come up with a better way to assess students’ learning than just using standardized testing.
I got my information for this post from the Answer Sheet blog. You can find the article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/when-an-adult-took-standardized-tests-forced-on-kids/2011/12/05/gIQApTDuUO_blog.html
