Posts Tagged Standardized Tests

No Child Left Behind and Discipline

On July 7, 2014 / Discipline

The follow-up to the original 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now referred to as “No Child Left Behind,” will rank as one of the most poorly constructed laws to improve education.

The approaches to increase low academic performance (which always concerns behavior and how schools handle discipline challenges) are narrowly drawn and rigid and in many ways counterproductive for improving education. In addition, there is an overreliance on test scores to measure academic quality. Standardized test scores are poor measures of academic progress. The purpose of standardized tests is to achieve a bell-shaped curve. If more than 50 per cent of a question is answered correctly, the question is eliminated because it does not add to the goal of … >>>

Yet Another Reason Why Standardized Tests are Faulty

On May 20, 2014 / Learning

I’ve long been an opponent of using standardized tests for student and teacher evaluations. In fact, if you search “standardized tests” on my blog, you’ll find many entries as to my reasoning. In short, standardized tests do not correlate with most school curriculums, these tests are biased toward higher economic communities, and they are not valid because they were not developed to assess if what has been taught has been learned.

Recently, I learned of another major problem with using standardized tests to assess schooling, and it has to do with the technology many schools are using to administer the tests.

Apparently, the Los Angeles City Schools are being plagued with problems regarding testing for student progress. According to the … >>>