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Topic: Standardized testing and public policy

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In the News (Thu 28 Aug 08)

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	On Standardized Testing
		Given the power of standardized testing in society, it comes as a surprise to many that the history of this form of testing is so short.
		Yearly testing, beginning in grade 3, became more the norm, although in many school districts accountability demands contributed to the use of annual fall and spring testing as a means of determining "gains" in achievement.
		Yet, standardized tests are rooted in standard curricular materials (basal textbooks, syllabuses, state or provincial guidelines) that have predetermined expectations all children must meet.
	www.udel.edu /bateman/acei/onstandard.htm (5871 words)

	On Standardized Testing. ERIC Digest.
		While standardized tests are problematic at all ages and levels of schooling, they are especially questionable in primary grades.
		Results of these "screening" tests are often the basis for cautioning parents to "wait another year before starting your child in kindergarten." They are also used as a means of "early identification" of individuals who need special assistance, according to the preschool screeners.
		If tests play a significant role in grade advancement or are the primary basis for a school's so-called accountability, teachers feel compelled to spend considerable time preparing children to take the tests.
	www.ericdigests.org /1992-5/testing.htm (1551 words)

	Washingtonpost.com: Live Online
		All the students taking the test have the same time, similar test booklets, can either use rulers or protractors or not, etc. You can have multiple choice, grid tests, fill in the bubbles, fill in the blank or essay questions all of which can be standardized tests.
		One of the reasons that testing specialists advocate using "multiple measures," that is different assessments of student achievement, before making any important decision like promotion is that children have bad days or there are sometimes distractions, such as a loud lawnmower, that run counter to the standardized conditions that we hope for.
		Testing results may show that instruction in the local schools serving wealthy neighborhoods is not adding much to what the children already bring to the classroom from their educated households.
	www.washingtonpost.com /wp-srv/liveonline/01/school_evers082301.htm (1664 words)

	Testing for the Public
		Testing for the Public is a non-profit corporation offering Strategy Courses for the LSAT, GMAT and GRE in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1985.
		Testing for the Public is a non-profit corporation founded in Berkeley, California in April 1985.
		Testing for the Public has identified a number of possible sources of bias against women and minority students on standardized tests.
	www.testing4.org (703 words)

	California public school assessment regulations
		A social science-history test is given in grades 8 and10, and a science test in grades 5, 9, 10, and 11.
		The mindless and ubiquitous use of standardized tests as the sole measure of educational progress is as unjust as it is absurd.
		Standardized testing now taken as a given in American education is an arcane form of information technology, a relic of the early years of the twentieth century.
	www-rohan.sdsu.edu /~rgibson/publicschoolassessment.html (4144 words)

	Standardized testing and public policy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Standardized testing is used as a public policy strategy to establish stronger accountability measures for public education.
		The idea behind the standardized testing policy movement is that testing is the first step to improving schools, teaching practice, and educational methods through data collection.
		Critics also charge that standardized tests encourage "teaching to the test" at the expense of creativity and in-depth coverage of subjects not on the test.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Standardized_testing_and_public_policy (262 words)

	NEA: Accountability and Testing
		In recent years, states have increasingly relied on standardized test scores as the most important and in some cases only measure of whether or not schools are meeting expectations.
		NEA does not believe that standardized test scores should be the only factor in determining progress in student learning -- and parents agree, according to a recent PTA poll.
		Standardized tests should be used to guide instruction by helping identify gaps in learning and groups of students who need the most help.
	www.nea.org /accountability/index.html (574 words)

	Standardized testing: The HMO of education?
		Some in the audience raised their hands when asked if standardized tests were given to first graders and kindergartners.
		Testing students at that age is inappropriate, he said, since about all they can do is successfully fill the bubble on the score sheet.
		Teachers were encouraged to talk publicly about how the increasing emphasis on standardized testing robs children of a well-rounded education, about the pressures they create, and about politicization of standardized testing.
	www.weac.org /News/2000-01/oct00/peterson.htm (888 words)

	Open Directory - Society: Issues: Education: Standardized Testing (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		National Research Council: Board on Testing and Assessment - The BOTA was created to assist policymakers and the public on issues of testing and assessment in education, the workplace, and the armed services.
		Test Bashing Series - A series of essays from the year 2000 that counter allegations made by standardized testing's opponents.
		Standardized Test Scores - RealAudio stream of an NPR report on parents objecting to the use of standardized tests to promote or hold back students in public schools.
	dmoz.org /Society/Issues/Education/Standardized_Testing (1237 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		A testing requirement would not be appropriate for children who are not enrolled in public schools since the tests would only be necessary to measure performance of the public school system.
		Standardized testing has a place, but it should be used judiciously and it should not be the sole barometer of quality in a school or a school system.
		Rather than make the school accountable by forcing standardized testing, let the school be accountable directly to the students and parents by allowing parent's to control their children's education through school choice.
	www.sutherlandinstitute.org /issuesguide/standardizedtestingbody.htm (349 words)

	frontline: testing our schools: testing. teaching. learning? \| PBS
		In this interview he discusses the uses and misuses of standardized tests, the pitfalls of a public policy that fails to take the nature of tests into account, and why the results of traditional standardized achievement tests are not accurate measures of school quality.
		An associate professor of education at the University of Iowa and co-author of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, one of the most widely administered tests in the country, Qualls tells FRONTLINE that the tests she has developed were never intended to be used for high-stakes purposes.
		This policy paper praises recent developments toward a new generation of state tests that are designed to enhance learning and measure students' knowledge more accurately than traditional standardized tests.
	www.pbs.org /wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/testing (1470 words)

	Reality Check 2001
		Large majorities of all groups express strong support for their own district's efforts to raise standards and for using standardized tests to enforce standards, although few believe a student's future should rest on one high-stakes test.
		Teachers are the most skeptical of testing, but only one-fifth say they have to focus on test preparation so much that real learning is neglected.
		Teachers say standardized tests can motivate kids and diagnose problems, and most say that "real learning" is not suffering in their own classrooms.
	www.publicagenda.org /specials/rc2001/reality.htm (761 words)

	Standardized Testing
		The figures from standardized tests may be distorted by test anxiety, "guessing" the right or wrong answers, or simply an error made by the scorer.
		The last reason that standardized tests are an inaccurate measure of the performance of children is because they cannot measure qualities that are vital to students later in their adult life.
		While I feel that standardized tests are not all bad, I do feel that using them as the sole means of evaluating student’s academic achievements does not give all students the same opportunity to express their knowledge and skills of a particular subject.
	oak.cats.ohiou.edu /~jl267100/info-pub.htm (1437 words)

	An Agenda for Research on Educational Testing
		The National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy was formed to monitor the effects of tests on students, schools, and society, and to encourage their use as gateways to education, not gatekeepers.
		In order to fulfill their purpose, the tests must be both technically sound and practically useful – that is, they must accurately test what has actually been taught – and should be used in combination with other indicators of student, school, and district performance.
		George Madaus is a Senior Fellow with the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy and the Boisi Professor of Education and Public Policy in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College.
	www.bc.edu /research/nbetpp/publications/v1n1.html (1682 words)

	Standardized Testing
		Michigan school officials were scrambling yesterday to investigate irregularities on the state's standardized tests in what appears to be the largest of a recent spate of cheating scandals across the country as the use of high-stakes tests has risen.
		Policy makers recognize that it is more expensive to assess high standards than the basics — it costs more to score an essay than to scan bubble-in answers.
		With public education in New York City thrown into disarray by a test scoring flub, educators are sounding the alarm anew: It is dangerous to rely on the scores from a single standardized test to make life-altering decisions about students or schools.
	www.cooperativeadventures.com /testing.htm (13827 words)

	Rhetoric 306 Spring 2005: Thesis Statements due by 12 am 4/14/05
		I will be addressing is those who feel that standardized tests are more important for teachers to focus on to the point that teachers turn away from the important curriculum that is required for their educational level.
		Predominantly minority public schools are spending excessive amount of time preparing standardized test takers for such exams not allowing sufficient time to educate the students on the essential course materials and objectives presented in what is to be the Texas Curriculum.
		Standardized testing is causing damage to public education by forcing many schools to push aside regular academic curriculums needed for a proper education and spending that time on test preparations in order to get and keep high scores.
	www.cwrl.utexas.edu /~fernheimer/rhe306sp05/archives/000277.html (4650 words)

	FairTest: University Testing/Texas Public University System
		The new law governing admissions policies, Subchapter S of Chapter 51 (the Texas Education Code), was specifically designed to counter the negative effects of the Hopwood v.
		The debate about the appropriateness of standardized tests has a long history, and certain elements are generally agreed upon.
		In addition to the two mentions of standardized testing described above, these factors include high school academic record, the applicant's socioeconomic background (including household income), whether the applicant is the first generation from his or her family to attend college, and personal interviews.
	www.fairtest.org /univ/Texas.htm (1766 words)

	Stop High-Stakes Tests
		We believe that Authentic Assessments, not High-Stakes Standardized Tests, are more appropriate to determine how a child is learning, and what a child has learned.
		Graduation Test to be given to Ohio high school students.
		Standardized tests erode rather than enhance education, says psychology professor.
	stophighstakestests.org (1149 words)

	Do Math2 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14)
		Six decades of revisions of the same word problem dealing with profits has transformed itself to meet various formats of standardized testing, concretize various standardized testing public policy issues and concerns.
		the test problem design literally abstracted itself from reality and from simple memorization and exercise of requisite computational skills/operations to an abstract discussion of sub arrays and sets.
		As a result of this type of teaching and testing, the mathematics competent student of the 70’s might have been able to create wondrous graphic organizers, but not correctly compute the mathematically precise response.
	tqnyc.org /NYC040609/tips/Domath2.htm (909 words)

	Accountability Services
		The major thrust of this mission is three-fold: the design and development of reliable and valid assessment instruments, the uniform implementation of and access to suitable assessment instruments for all students; and the provision of accurate and statistically appropriate reports.
		Revised policy HSP-C-018 provides achievement level ranges (cut scores) for the end-of-grade tests of reading grades 3-8 (previously adopted), the new interim end-of-grade mathematics achievement level ranges (cut scores) for grades 3-8, and the achievement level ranges (cut scores) for North Carolina Writing Assessments at grades 4, 7, and 10 (previously adopted).
		Publication outlining the responsibilities and duties of a proctor
	www.ncpublicschools.org /accountability (757 words)

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