Testing And The Testing Industry

The kingdom of Altheras had been a small but prosperous and independent kingdom. They had favored political independence, instead forging strong trade relationships and selling there many resources and products made out of those resources to other nations. There military was a combination of a traditional military with long-standing customs who were mainly put to use for guarding the trading caravans and ships and performing military parades and honor guards on ceremonial occasions like a coronation or a royal funeral.

The NCLB Act has obligated the government to find a way to keep track of progress, which, in their minds, is administering high-stakes tests. High-stakes testing is scrutinized all the time, since some believe it is the only indicator of tracking students and teachers. They seemed to have been ridiculed by many and favored by few; nonetheless there are significant disparities in the public’s and government’s opinion. According to Dunne (2000), “Tests aren't just tests anymore -- at least not high-stakes tests, which are being used in some states to determine which students stay back a grade, which high school seniors receive diplomas, which teachers get bonuses, and more.”

Standardized testing has become a yearly fixture in classrooms around the United States. Legislation such as No Child Left Behind holds educators and administrators responsible for the learning of students. One way to assess this learning is through the use of a standardized test, the results of which can be compared to a predetermined benchmark. I believe it’s a good idea to hold educators accountable for the work they perform in the classroom and to hold school administrators accountable for education outcomes. However, the means by which this accountability is currently being evaluated—standardized testing—is detrimental to both schools and students alike, and it should be discontinued. Standardized testing of young children produces potentially meaningless results, is potentially discriminatory against certain populations, and forces educators to modify their instruction (potentially for the worse) in an effort to avoid being punished for not meeting required benchmarks.

Under No Child Left Behind, standards and assessments rest tightly at the national education policy, and remain as the strongest force on policy and practice. Despite the importance of high-stakes testing to improve America’s public education system, there have been numerous effects on schools, teachers, and even the students.

In 2005 Public Education Network conducted a survey asking about different aspects of No Child Left Behind. 67% of the people surveyed said No Child Left Behind requires too much testing for students and only 16% thought the amount of testing was “just right.” When asked, what provisions are essential to closing the achievement gap between children of various groups, the aspects that people thought were most important were tutoring, adequate funding and

After the Introduction of NCLB, test driven accountability has become the norm in public schools. Other stakeholders in the education sector have raised concerns that reliance on test as a measure of educational achievement may be misleading a move that NCLB has defended saying that theirs has been to direct attention to low achieving students with a view to improving their performances (Dee & Jacob, 2010). Analyses that have been conducted by stakeholder organizations have shown that NCLB impacts particular schools and districts differently.

Until the sixteenth century, the world used four main substances for commodity. These substances were; gold, silver, copper, and various shells. Out of all these substances it would be silver, that was used as a commodity and a type of currency. This allowed a all-encompassing network of global trade in the sixteenth century to be created. The need for silver grew from the sixteenth century until about 1750. China’s demand for silver served as an engine for world trade. The Japanese Tokugawa Shogunate and Spanish empire earned a substantial portion of silver profits from several of the mines they controlled.

“Man, having to take these ridiculous standardized tests are just a huge waste of not only our time but the teacher’s time stressing about it, “stated my friend, Ian Jahn. This quote is what many students in this decade are agreeing with because of the lack of purpose the test holds. The No Child Left behind Act is the most current edition of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the major federal law authorized the federal spending on programs to support kindergarten to the end of high school. Elementary and Secondary Education Act is the largest source of federal spending on elementary and secondary education (Evans 1). Not only does this test cost too much this test also has way too much impact because

Standardized Testing have been ubiquitous in America for more than 50 years. It originates from China where they used similar test systems to gauge individual’s Confucian philosophy and poetry for government jobs. After No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed in America in 2001 to ensure high quality student achievements through tests (Yell 180-181), the use of these standardized tests rose. Western World

Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises is a story set in Paris, France shortly after World War I. The main character, Jake Barnes, is a veteran of the war. While serving, he suffered from an injury and is now impotent. This has many effects on his life, influencing his opinion of himself and his relationships with those around him.

Students have shown some small increases in test scores since 2002, when NCLB became a law, but they are nothing compared to what was predicted and promised (Strauss). Our government has invested huge amounts of time and money into increasing student test scores, but we have very little to show for it (Strauss). In fact, there is no evidence that better test scores help students in the real goals of education, which are to promote critical thinking, make lifelong learners, and to prepare children for real life (Strauss). Many people who would disagree on most issues, agree that the time taken for students to take the tests, along with the narrowed curriculum, and teaching to the tests, have had a very negative effect on overall student learning (Strauss). In the end, testing will document student achievement on individual, district, and state levels, and can give teachers insight into what needs to be done to help improve test scores. But the constant testing of students does very little to help their actual learning and may even hinder it

As we saw, proponents of NCLB point out that test scores have improved since 2002. But critics are not certain that the law is responsible for because the schools’ tests have improved since the 1980’s. Since the1970’s, documentation show an increase of students taking the test SAT and ACT tests. In fact these tests that were once optional became more popular during that era. Because children at all levels were taking those tests, test cores declined drastically in the 70’s and 80’s. Furthermore, critics of NCLB say that better schools are not indicative of the success of this

Since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) the number of standardized tests conducted in American education has exploded leaving parents and educators alike to question how all this time and focus spent on testing is impacting the learning process? The answer to this question is critical to understanding if the NCLB is accomplishing its goal or eroding the American education system. The proliferation of standardized tests has fundamentally changed the structure of classroom instruction by shifting much of the focus to test preparation or teaching to the test as it is commonly known. This change in education approach towards teaching to the test is hurting America’s

Many stakeholders’ in public education are seeking solutions to produce high achieving students who graduate ready to embrace technological challenges. One solution for many stakeholders’ seems to be high stakes testing. High stakes testing is an educational reform where decisions are based on individual student performance, teacher performance, and school performance. The tests are usually performed as an end of course or end of grade assessment after completion of the curriculum. The No Child Left Behind Act or NCLB signed by President Bush in 2001 was mandated to improve student performances and remove inequalities among diverse student populations. This Act required states to design and develop programs that employed test- based

The No Child Left Behind Act should tremendously be re-examined and amended because the focus on the standardized tests decrease the quality of other subjects not on the tests, the tests are not an efficient tool to make certain that a student is receiving an excellent education and the tests create unnecessary stress for the students, teachers and administrators. The purpose of No Child Left Behind is to provide every student with the opportunity to receive a top-grade education. This is a great proposal to strive towards but, legislation plans on achieving this proposal by making schools responsible for their students’ proficiency and to measure their proficiency with the use of standardized tests. After the students take the