Appropriate Use of High Stakes Testing in Our School Nations

Appropriate Use of High Stakes Testing in Our School Nations

Appropriate Use of High Stakes Testing in Our School Nations

High stake testing is a controversial subject, which seems to be debated between parents and faculty for students’ success. High stake testing is conclusively defined as a battery of examinations administered to student periodically to monitor their progress of acquiring knowledge from the normal curriculum. There has been recent debate in regards to whether not high stakes testing among American youth is a positive or negative action. This paper will demonstrate, with respect to all views involved in this topic, the fundamentals of the positive and negative talking points about this important and extremely controversial issue. Topics mostly covered will be the heated debates between parents and the school faculty as well as the possible emotional and monetary damages that incur by regulating high stake testing.
A teacher or any kind of instructor’s primary objective is to ensure that basic required knowledge, which may be included in something as simple as a syllabus, is effectively distributed to students. One can be certain that regular testing is prudent to ensure the pupils have effectively retained the knowledge. However, when an instructor is required to teach only material relevant to a test of high stake, then the knowledge is only limited to just those specifics. Further, as Mr. Dave Stratman, in a May 2000 article illustrates: “The tests are designed to make students fail. They frequently test students on material that they haven’t yet covered in class.”(Stratman, 2000) If this is true, then certainly the emotional frustration that is associated is surely crippling to a student. Further, a teacher who believes that the short amount of time he or she is given to teach what’s on the test is enough time then that teacher is both foolish and naïve. This is also damaging to students in that it is near impossible to learn all information that is on the test.
Another unfortunate area of...

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