Standardized testing in schools

Some of the people advocating seem like people who take their job seriously, some have a reputation for being jokes in the classroom

Standardized Test create a whole school year pointed towards teaching to the test. It is one of the thousands of things in education that sound good in theory but don't work in practicality.

Take for example a World History Class. It is now taught in well defined units of chopped up memorizeable factoids. I called this trying to catch water with a net. You are missing 90% of it. There is so much context and flow missing that you aren't getting the whole picture. It is like this in every subject.

Students want to take you somewhere that they are interested in? Can't do that. Have to still to the standards because they are on the test. And the test is all that matters to schools and school systems.

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teacher friends and acquaintances make social media posts advocating getting rid of standardized testing in schools. It seems like a way to avoid accountability to me

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They are parroting shite from the AFT and the NEA that spreads throughout teacher circles unquestioned. It is absolutely to avoid accountability.

For the losers that whine about "teaching to the test," you do realize that nearly every state has published learning expectations for every grade, every subject, so the tests are based on the expected standard of learning. Or you'd rather teachers just make up whatever the feel like teaching, which can be different than other teachers in the same school, district, etc?

A snippet of 3rd grade history in TX

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(B) identify individuals, including Pierre-Charles L'Enfant, Benjamin Banneker, and Benjamin Franklin, who have helped to shape communities; and

(C) describe how individuals, including Daniel Boone and the Founding Fathers have contributed to the expansion of existing communities or to the creation of new communities.
...
(A) identify and describe the heroic deeds of state and national heroes and military and first responders such as Hector P. Garcia, James A. Lovell, and the Four Chaplains; and

(B) identify and describe the heroic deeds of individuals such as Harriet Tubman, Todd Beamer, and other contemporary heroes.

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Well another problem with teaching to the test is you only get those testable subjects focused on. Need to miss a class? Miss history. Need to go to therapy? Miss history. If it’s not math science or English, the school doesn’t give a frick about it because 80% of the school grades come from state testing. The rest is graduation rate and act scores. So we get kids who can’t function in the real world but they know the quadratic formula (if they have a calculator).

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It being standardized helps to judge the results when you can control for other factors.

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Why not just use the ACT? Set a required score to graduate. Why do we need standardized test before that? The high school test are basically fail proof anyway if you have home support.

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I appreciate this sentiment but none of that should apply to reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Social Studies and History shouldn't be on standardized tests.

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We need to clarify here. Are we talking elementary school age test or high school graduation requirement level test. 2 separate issues.

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Do some actually advocate it because they could legitimately teach better without having to spend so much time preparing kids specifically for testing?

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I never had a teacher preparing us for testing. They taught the material. You learned it or you didn't. If the teacher was really good then the side effect was you doing better on the test.
The important thing was putting the best teachers in the best classes. My HS G.T. teachers were the most knowledgeable and the fastest at covering material because all of their students were very high I.Q. Putting that teacher in charge of dumb arse kids would have been a waste. Kids are not equal. You cannot make them equal. But the colleges keep trying.

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Because some people pay thousands of dollars for private tutoring for the ACT so it skews the results.

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That is completely irrelevant. It is a content knowledge measure. Teachers would become the tutors.

Do MLB scouts care if you got outside help besides your HS coach when they are scouting for the draft?

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I never had a teacher preparing us for testing. They taught the material. You learned it or you didn't. If the teacher was really good then the side effect was you doing better on the test.
The important thing was putting the best teachers in the best classes. My HS G.T. teachers were the most knowledgeable and the fastest at covering material because all of their students were very high I.Q. Putting that teacher in charge of dumb arse kids would have been a waste. Kids are not equal. You cannot make them equal. But the colleges keep trying.

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How is life over 40?

Everything changed with NCLB.