Assessment
Assessment has been an issue that I have struggled more with personally, rather than professionally. As I was reading this chapter, I began to think about some of the standardized tests that I was administered as a young child in elementary school. The only ones that I could remember was the IOWA and the ITBS. I remember taking these tests having no idea and frankly, not even caring about, why I was being given these exams. In my mind, they measured nothing about who I was as a learner or said anything about me as a student. How could a test tell someone about me? I remember getting the results back and seeing the dots telling me where my score fell and in which category they fell in…whether it was “below average, average, or above average.” My score never fell in the above average section very often and I didn’t really see anything wrong with that. As an elementary school aged child, school was something that I HAD to do. It was my job and at that point I cared more about playing than about making good grades. Nobody told me what those tests measured and I was not pressured by the tests. I found them boring, but an excuse to get some extra recess time. So, as you can probably tell, I was not so much the studious child that I actually turned out to be as an adult. As I write about my experience as a young child being administered these tests, I write about my innocence as a young test taker being foolish to think that a test could not possibly tell my teachers who I was as a student or a learner. Granted, I didn’t do that well in elementary school…I mean, I didn’t do bad, I just didn’t really care all that much. As an adult looking back, I now can see that those tests really did have an impact on me as a student and the educational path that was assigned to me by my teachers based on those tests that I was given.
Standardized testing can have such an impact on children and the path in which they are lead down by educators. Those tests label students and create misconceptions within students that are hard to overcome as young children. I have literally seen the stress that standardized testing puts on young elementary aged students, as well as teachers. I recently heard that in some states, teachers were actually going to get paid more if their students performed better than other teachers within their school, district, whatever. What kind of message are we sending young children when their level of performance is going to be measured by a test, rather than the teachers who actually know the students?
I’m going to be very honest and say that I didn’t get accepted into many colleges because of my SAT scores, however I graduated from a private college preparatory school with a GPA of 3.8…yet, because of my ”lower than average” SAT scores had to feel as though I was not good enough to be enrolled in some school’s institution for higher learning. I was being judged not by who I was as an actual learner and student, but how well I performed on a test that I was given on a Saturday morning for 4 hours! I read on p.224 that the SAT’s goal is to predict how a student is likely to perform in the future and that the test is used to predict the grades that high school students will earn when they get into college. I am a walking testimony that those tests do nothing to predict ones future success or how well one will perform in the future. I went to college on the Hope Scholarship and maintained it throughout my entire undergrad career as a college student. I graduated with honors and maintained a 3.7 overall GPA and a GPA of 4.0 within my major classes the last 2 years in undergrad. I say all of this to make the point that…there is no test that one can be given to predict, tell, define WHO someone is a learner, student, or person. Should we do away with these exams? I don’t think doing away with them is the answer, but it should NEVER be the only measure one looks at to determine the success of an individual.
