Ignorance is Strength

Hello again,

I am responding to an article posted on edweek.org. It’s not so much a scholarly article as much as it is a Q and A among teachers. There are two guests one a reporter, who is also an author or a book on standardized testing, and a third grade teacher. I found this article to be very interesting.

During this interview Mandi Rounds, a third grade teacher at Tyler Heights Elementary School in Annapolis, Md., commented on a question as to whether there could be any middle ground between accepting testing and the fact that students need to learn certain concepts to be well educated. She responds:

“It saddens me that we are being driven not by what we know to be good teaching methods, but by tests that often don’t test the most important concepts. I think if teachers and administrators were part of the process of making the tests and deciding what is on them, then more important concepts would be tested, and would be, therefore, more relevant to the things already being taught in the classroom.”

This comment answers some of my questions as well as provoking other ones. This comment, from a teacher in the field, only confirms some of the things that I have been hearing from other teachers. This is the fact that standardized test aren’t that effective at teaching students what they need to know. It also makes me question why we even have these tests if the teachers and the administration already knows that the don’t teach what needs to be taught? I also wonder who is in charge of deciding the content of these tests if it is not the teachers and administrators? Who are the people making these tests and why are the making a product that isn’t effective?

Mandi also made a comment that if teachers and administrators where involved in compiling the tests then they could more accurately evaluate and teach the students. But I wonder to myself, is this practical? Would a teacher have the time, or even want to take the time to make one of these tests. I can only imagine that I might not have the time to participate in such an endevor.

I feel that these questions are a good start to my journey through the world of standardized tests. If any of my fellow bloggers out there know the answers to some of my questions, please respond and enlighten me.

Thanks,

Johnathon

- link to article.

Hello world,

As many of you know I am blogging for my ENG 310 class. As a member of the class I am supposed to pick a specific issued related to teaching writing that matters to me. After much consideration I have decided to write about standardized testing, more specifically it’s affect on teaching writing.

I have chosen this topic because I want to uncover more information on the issue, because it seems to be such a large part of the teaching world. I also was interested in seeing what different educators opinions were on the subject. What have they done to cope with standardized testing, has it been a big hassle or have they not had much trouble with it.

I am also interested in the affects it has on students and how they learn. I assistant coach middle school cross country and I was recently talking with one of my athletes. I was asking her what she was studying in English class and she said all they were doing was getting ready for the meap. I found this to be rather curious since it was only a month into the school year. How is she doing in the class, what is she learning, how much more or less could she learn without the meap preparations?

These are just some of the topics that I hope to discover more information about throughout the course of the semester. I have subscribed to a couple of feeds from google news regarding these topics.

Talk to you soon,

Johnathon