My thoughts on assessing school age children
In today's school system, school age children are being prepared for standardised testing, instead of an education. With those standards in place, student progress and achievement will be measured according to state tests designed to match those state standards and given to every child, every year (Rapple,2004,p. 195). If school age children must be assessed, then they should be conducted three times a year, beginning, middle and of course the end of the year. During these assessments, the teacher would be able to pinpoint the child's progress and develop a plan to help in areas that need improvement. I believe crowding unfamiliar information into the minds of children can be a bit overwhelming. Most psychologists now agree that the brain is like a muscle, affected by mental exercise which often encourage or discourage by social setting. Brain structures grow or shrink depending on past learning (Berger,2016,p.359). If teachers are able to teach children the basic skills they need for life-long lessons and assess them on these skills, the scores would be a much better turn out.
One of the countries I decided to research was Geat Britain. Just like our American school Britain, have standardized testing as well. But more than three- quarters of teachers believe that pupils' enjoyment of education is being damaged by the Government's methods for measuring and raising achievement - its tests and exams regime( Mansel,2008). It amazes me that the effect that testing has on school age children in various countries. In the article "Smiles better than testing", Warwick Mansel, express the concerns of vigorous preparation for testing have on children. However, many professionals believe that the testing side has dominated, marginalising pupil development. I particular, there is a widespread view that putting children through months of test preparation, with aim of raising their achievement, can be boring for some and make others anxious (Mansel,2008).
Assessing school age children should be an enjoyable moment between the teacher and child. In these moments, one should be able to locate the child's strengths and or weaknesses. From these skills, I believe children should be tested on so that the process can be memorable and a complete success.
References
Mansel,W(2008).Smiles better than testing?TES: Times Educational Supplement,(4780),14-15.
Rapple,Brendan.2004 "Standardised Testing in AmericanSchool:Lessons from Matthew Arnold's Britain:Contemporary Review,285(1665),193-198
Brandi
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, we need to change the way that we test for understanding of what children are learning. When I was in school, we would have a pretest, and then a test at the end of a unit. That way the teacher would be able to assess what we already knew and what we had to learn. I do not remember taking any type of standardized testing up until I reach high school. I do remember having to take tests on certain subjects that we had to pass before we could graduate. Tests have always been a little stressful for me. I can not imagine the type of stress that children have to go thru when they have to take over 200 standardized tests during the school years.
I think that not only do we need to remove some of these tests that children take but we also have to think of ways outside the box to have children apply and showcase their knowledge, which I feel is a better indicator of the knowledge that they have acquired than a test.
Cindy
Brandi,
ReplyDeleteI have the same thought about standardized testing. Schools spends weeks testing children instead of educating our children . I love your idea that children should be only be assess in the beginning,middle and end because if children are assessed in the beginnng it will help teachers to know where a child needs improvement.
Chiom
Brandi,
ReplyDeleteI like the idea you had about making the testing enjoyable for the students. If the schools did this maybe the students wouldn't freeze up, have trouble, or be afraid of the testing. Thanks for sharing.