Testing
What should be known about standardized testing inschools? By Tammy Tillman
One tool that Bayard Public Schools use to learn about students is the standardized test. Bayard Public Schools uses the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress.Understanding the role of testing will help your students to succeed in school and to develop a better relationship between families and school.
The use of standardized testing in the United States is a 20th-century phenomenon with its origins in World War I and the Army Alpha and Beta tests developed byRobert Yerkes and colleagues. Contributing to the growth of standardized tests in the United States in the mid 1800s was immigration. Standardized tests were used in immigration;when people first came over to test social roles and find social power and status.
Another example of standardized testing and how it started in the United States was byEverett Lindquist, a professor from Iowa, who made the ACT (American College Testing), which is a very well known standardized test. The ACT includes 4 main sections with multiple choice questions; these sections include English, Math, Reading, and Science, with an optional writing section.
The standardized tests are created by commercial test publishers and are designed to give a common measure of students' performance. Because large numbers of students throughout the country take the same test, they give educators a common measure for comparison. Educators use these standardized tests to tell how well school programs are succeeding or to give themselves a picture of the skills and abilities of today's students.
Standardized tests can help teachers and administrators make decisions regarding the instructional program. They help schools measure how students in a given class, school, or school system perform in relation to other students who take the same test. The results from these tests, teachers and administrators can evaluate the school system, a school program, and/or a particular student.
Standardized achievement tests measure how much students have already learned about a school subject or document academic progress. The results from these tests can help teachers developplans that meet students' needs in each subject area, such as reading, math, language skills, spelling, or science.
Standardized tests score interpretations compare test-takers to a sample of peers. The goal is to rank students as being better or worse than other students. Standardized test score interpretations are associated with traditional education. Students who perform better than others pass the test, and students who perform worse than others fail the test. Educators most commonly use achievement tests to:
Standardized tests give teachers only part of the picture of students’ strengths and weaknesses. Teachers combine the results of many methods to gain insights into the skills, abilities, and knowledge of your child. These methods include:
Tests also provide experience useful in preparing youngsters for admission and course examinations for selective colleges and universities. Test experience for non-college bound students may be decisive in helping them score well on initial employment tests.
For post-graduate and especially professional education and employment, tests are usually required for admission and licensing in such fields as law and medicine. Students without extensive exposure to school examinations are likely to be handicapped in post-high school education and experience.
One of the main advantages of standardized testing is that the results can be used to show that the test scores have validity and reliability, as well as results which are general in nature andresults are repeatable. This is often compared with grades on a school report cards andtranscripts, which are assigned by individual teachers. It may be difficult to account for differences in educational culture across schools, difficulty of a given teacher's curriculum, differences in teaching style, and techniques and biases that affect grading. This makes standardized tests useful for admissions purposes in higher education, where a school is trying to compare students from across the nation or across the world.
Another advantage is breaking down of the components of the test. A well designed standardized test provides an assessment of an individual's mastery of knowledge or skill which at some level will provide useful information. Standardized tests, which by definition give all test-takers the same test under the same conditions, are seen as being fairer than assessments that use different questions or different conditions for students according to their race, socioeconomic status, or other considerations.
In review the central goal of any achievement test is to learn what the test-taker already knows. Looking only at achievement tests can give educators a good idea of where the test taker is at the present moment when it comes to knowledge of a specific topic or subject area. Most tests are designed to be straightforward for this reason, and they tend to present material in a clear and unambiguous way.
Test results will be included with report cards and if there are any questions please contact Mrs. Tillman.