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Education
Recently, Harvard professors ceased giving final exams as part of their overall assessment of student performance (Strauss, 2010). In a radical transformation of official college policy, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to eliminate exams and require professors who wish to administer them to file an application form. The reverse used to be true: exams were the norm and professors wishing to opt-out would have to ask for permission.
What has caused this startling turn of events? Evidence, for one. In Test Problems: Seven Reasons Why Standardized Tests Are Not Working, Sadker & Zittleman (n.d.) outline empirical evidence supporting a shift away from examinations as the primary measure of student success. Examinations do measure a certain type of achievement, but they should not be used as the only method of gauging student progress and performance. One of the core reasons cited by Sadker & Zittleman (n.d.) include student stress.
Examinations are only one of many different types of academic assessments that...
"We know that the typical multiple-choice and short-answer tests aren't the only way, or necessarily the best way, to gauge a student's knowledge and abilities," (How Should We Measure Student Learning? The Many Forms of Assessment," (n.d.). Application-based assessments are one alternative to examinations. Papers and creative projects are other types of end-of-year assessments that can and will replace examinations as the means of assessment. Formal examinations, including multiple choice and short answer tests, are becoming only one of a plethora of ways educators practice assessment.
Doing away with examinations does not mean doing away with assessments. Quite the contrary, assessments are necessary for measuring not just the student's performance but also the teacher's. It is important to know what methods are working, and what resources or tools are needed to improve student performance. An assessment is irreplaceable in this regard.
However, the examination model is only one of many that can be…
References
"How Should We Measure Student Learning? The Many Forms of Assessment," (n.d.). Edutopia. Retrieved online: http://www.edutopia.org/comprehensive-assessment-introduction
Sadker, D. & Zittleman, K. (n.d.). Test Problems: Seven Reasons Why Standardized Tests Are Not Working " Excerpt from: Teachers, Schools, and Society: A Brief Introduction to Education p. 370-376."
Strauss, V. (2010). Harvard profs dropping final exams. The Washington Post. July 17, 2010. Retrieved online: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/learning/harvard-profs-giving-up-final.html
Student Engagement and Mathematical Justification The following paper begins with the description of student engagement. It moves further to identify the effect of student engagement on student performance. In addition to that, the paper also focuses on the importance of mathematical justification. The paper also highlights the importance of student engagement in mathematical justification. Furthermore, the paper comments on the options that the teachers have for improving the student engagement in their
The shift toward standardized testing has failed to result in a meaningful reduction of high school dropout rates, and students with disabilities continue to be marginalized by the culture of testing in public education (Dynarski et al., 2008). With that said, the needs of students with specific educational challenges are diverse and complex, and the solutions to their needs are not revealed in the results of standardized testing (Crawford &
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Communicative Language Teaching the Best Methodology to Prepare Students for the Cambridge First Certificate Exam? Based on its emphasis on authenticity and relevancy to students' lives, it has been argued that the communicative language teaching approach may represent the best methodology to prepare students to take the Cambridge English: First for Schools (also known as First Certificate in English or FCE for Schools), which demonstrates student progress in second language
Abstract No teacher can entirely avoid the realities of student standardized assessment. But teachers must make informed choices in the classroom in regards to how students are instructed, based upon individual student needs and awareness of student diversity. There are significant questions regarding the potential biases of many standardized tests, particularly in regards to historically discriminated-against racial, ethnic, and socio-economic groups. Teachers must be aware of these questions and biases and