High Stakes Testing

¶ … articles on high-stakes testing. Specifically, it will review the three articles, and include how the articles changed my personal views on high-stakes testing. Clearly, testing is a necessity in the educational environment, and yet, many forms of testing seem to be more a form of control and labeling rather than a way to accurately measure the student's expected and actual learning outcomes.

High-stakes testing may help reinforce the school district's learning standards and outcomes, but it may not be the method most effective in measuring the child's development and learning potential. What is the purpose of educational testing? Ostensibly, it exists to measure a student's progress throughout the school year, but it can also be a measure of the educator and district's success in passing on information from educator to learner.

Most parents and professionals want some measure of proof that their children are receiving a quality education that can carry them into the future, and testing helps assess and prove these educational goals. However, often so much importance is placed on test results, that often the student and their needs are overlooked in the process.

The introduction of so called "high-stakes" testing to determine if a child should move on to the next grade or graduate has come under fire from many critics for a number of reasons, including the accuracy of the tests themselves, and their ability to correctly measure a student's educational progress. In addition, many critics questioned whether one, high-stakes test could really begin to measure both teacher and student success.

In fact, some students simply do better on tests than others, and the actual test may not be a valid measurement of a student's actual educational success for that reason. Some excellent students may falter for a number of reasons on any given testing day, while others may shine, simply because they have mastered the mystery of test-taking, rather than the actual material covered. High-stakes testing may place far too much pressure on students and teachers, thereby setting them up for eventual failure.

Indeed, many teachers may actually "teach to the test," rather than ensure students receive a quality and necessary well-rounded education. This tends to narrow the curriculum and the student's educational experience. This cuts students off from experiencing new information that could lead to new exploration and development, and it also narrows the teacher's focus, removing some of the joy of discovery and creation from the classroom environment.

Indeed high-stakes testing may adversely affect teachers just as much as it affects students, by making the teachers so anxious about test results that they become increasingly geared to making sure their students pass the test, rather than making sure the student's receive a high-quality educational experience. This can lead to a negative classroom experience for the students and the teacher, and as researchers, Steeves, Hodgson, and Peterson noted, at least one state's dropout rate increased after the introduction of high-stakes testing.

Other researchers note that the tests actually encourage children to leave school when they fear they cannot pass the test, or they fail it. The testing process is already fraught with stress and fear, and placing so much emphasis on the results of one test may be far too much pressure for students. It may create a negative and highly stressful connotation of education that the student may never overcome. Personally, these articles created many questions that this reader had not considered before.

Initially, the idea of high-stakes testing seems like a reasonable way to measure the end progress of a student in many situations. Many school districts are facing budget woes and fiscal instability, and so, proving the educational system is working is vital to their survival and success. However, these articles clearly indicate some of the pitfalls of high-stakes testing from both the student and educational perspective.

High-stakes testing places far too much pressure on the student to pass, and the educator to make sure the student passes, and in the end, everyone loses. The students have lost many opportunities for individual discovery and creation, and the teachers have lost the ability to connect with their students and create a happy and yet successful learning environment. This continues reliance on testing is also quite stressful for students, and may even encourage some students to leave school because they fear failure.

Clearly, the educational goals and expectations of the family and the school district must be met, but high-stakes testing seems far too stressful and unsuccessful to remain as the only way to assess the abilities of students. Another quite interesting item regarding high-stakes testing was the idea that many educators are not properly trained in the best way to create testing material, and so, their tests are not accurate measures of their students' abilities.

It seems quite reasonable that this is the case, and so, standardized tests may make sense, but it makes more sense to properly train the.