Mandated Standardized Testing And The Curriculum

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Reflecting on my own teaching practice of six years, led me to explore teacher and student perceptions of the purpose of school. In an attempt to understand how students and teachers view the system in which they are operating, they were asked to express their opinions of the education system and its purposes. My research methodology included interviews, questionnaires and informal observations. I used a holistic approach of data analysis to look at how two populations, students and teachers, feel about standardized testing and mandated curriculum. The students and teachers of River Town Middle School, have a clear understanding of how mandated curriculum and standardized tests affect their classrooms and label certain students as failures. Many teachers and students remarked that standardized testing is unfair as a sole measurement of student and school achievement. One teacher mentioned, "It is unscientific to base any results on one test." Mandated curriculum is seen by teachers as something that destroys creativity and limits student/teacher involvement in decision making. The thoughts of the participants touch on the difference that is created in schools and our inability to truly individualize education. Further research could include learning how individuals affect change and explore teacher organizations that are working to make changes to assessment practices and oppose the use of mandated curriculum in the current educational system.

Discusses standardized testing in schools and the controversy about its value as a tool, the history of testing, standards, and scoring, the No Child Left Behind Act, the effects on teaching, cheating among students and teachers, and public opinion about the topic.

For five days a week for approximately nine months out of the year totaling countless hours, teachers work with other people’s most treasured gifts—their children. That the teacher is the most important element in fostering an energetic, engaging, and inspiring classroom environment where authentic learning can unfold cannot be overstated. Indeed, it is the teacher who understands self or does not; it is the teacher who is prepared or is not; it is the teacher who has command of subject matter or does not; it is the teacher who inculcates in an appropriate way or does not; and, it is the teacher who is patient, understanding, empathetic, and enthusiastic or is not. To that end, Teaching With Purpose underscores what it means to be an insightful teacher, foundationally emphasizing that the central aspect toward richly transforming education is through the professionalization of what it means to be a teacher. Written in accessible language, and attentive to connecting theory to practice, the benefits and features of this book are mindful of a diverse readership.

A 2020 AESA Critics' Choice Book Award winner The rise of high-stakes testing in New York and across the nation has narrowed and simplified what is taught, while becoming central to the effort to privatize public schools. However, it and similar reform efforts have met resistance, with New York as the exemplar for how to repel standardized testing and invasive data collection, such as inBloom. In New York, the two parent/teacher organizations that have been most effective are Long Island Opt Out and New York State Allies for Public Education. Over the last four years, they and other groups have focused on having parents refuse to submit their children to the testing regime, arguing that if students don’t take the tests, the results aren’t usable. The opt-out movement has been so successful that 20% of students statewide and 50% of students on Long Island refused to take tests. In Opting Out, two parent leaders of the opt-out movement—Jeanette Deutermann and Lisa Rudley—tell why and how they became activists in the two organizations. The story of parents, students, and teachers resisting not only high-stakes testing but also privatization and other corporate reforms parallels the rise of teachers across the country going on strike to demand increases in school funding and teacher salaries. Both the success of the opt-out movement and teacher strikes reflect the rise of grassroots organizing using social media to influence policy makers at the local, state, and national levels. Perfect for courses such as: The Politics Of Education | Education Policy | Education Reform Community Organizing | Education Evaluation | Education Reform | Parents And Education

Kohn's central message is that standardized tests are "not a force of nature but a force of politics--and political decisions can be questioned, challenged, and ultimately reversed."

Inspired by Depression-era travel guides, an anthology of essays on each of the fifty states, plus Washington, D.C., by some of America’s finest writers. State by State is a panoramic portrait of America and an appreciation of all fifty states (and Washington, D.C.) by fifty-one of the most acclaimed writers in the nation. Anthony Bourdain chases the fumigation truck in Bergen County, New Jersey Dave Eggers tells it straight: Illinois is Number 1 Louise Erdrich loses her bikini top in North Dakota Jonathan Franzen gets waylaid by New York’s publicist . . . and personal attorney . . . and historian . . . and geologist John Hodgman explains why there is no such thing as a “Massachusettsean” Edward P. Jones makes the case: D.C. should be a state! Jhumpa Lahiri declares her reckless love for the Rhode Island coast Rich Moody explores the dark heart of Connecticut’s Merritt Parkway, exit by exit Ann Patchett makes a pilgrimage to the Civil War site at Shiloh, Tennessee William T. Vollman visits a San Francisco S&M club And many more Praise for State by State An NPR Best Book of the Year “The full plumage of American life, in all its riotous glory.” —The New Yorker “Odds are, you’ll fall for every state a little.” —Los Angeles Times

Testing is one of the most controversial of all state and federal educational policies. The effects of testing are quite ambiguous. The same test may lead to different consequences in different circumstances, and teachers may use very different strategies to prepare students for tests. Although most experts agree that mandatory testing leads to teaching to the test, they disagree about whether it leads to meaningless drill, wasted time, de-professionalizing teachers, and demotivating students, or to more challenging and thoughtful curricula, more engaging teaching, increased student motivation, and increased accountability. To help sort through this ambiguity and provide a firmer basis for decisions, The Ambiguity of Teaching to the Test: Standards, Assessment, and Educational Reform offers a hard look at the effects of state testing, and thoroughly examines the ambiguity of test preparation and how test preparation practices are influenced by what teachers know and the leadership coming from the school and district. Drawing on data from a three-year study of New Jersey's testing policy in elementary mathematics and science, it helps to explain the variety of ways that teachers modify their teaching in response to state tests, raises important questions, and offers useful guidance on how state policymakers and local and district school administrators can implement policies that will improve educational equity and performance for all students. It also offers an in-depth analysis of classroom practices that should inform teachers and teacher educators whose goal is to meaningfully implement conceptually based teaching practices. This comprehensive look at the statewide variation in testing practice features: *a data-based, non-ideological treatment of how testing affects teachers, in a field characterized by ideologically driven beliefs and by anecdotes; *an extensive and well-integrated combination of qualitative and quantitative data sources that provide a statewide overview, as well as an in-depth analysis of teachers and classrooms; *a careful analysis of the variety of forms of teaching to the test; and *a multilevel exploration of how a variety of personal and leadership factors can influence teaching to the test. This is an important book for researchers, professionals, and students in educational testing, educational policy, educational administration, mathematics and science education, educational reform, and the politics and sociology of education. It will also prove useful for state policymakers, school and district leaders, and teacher educators and curriculum specialists who are making decisions about how to design and respond to new testing systems.

When George Bernard Shaw wrote his play, Pygmalion, he could hardly have foreseen the use of the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy in debates about standardized testing in schools. Still less could he have foreseen that the validity of the concept would be examined many years later in Irish schools. While the primary purpose of the experimental study reported in this book was not to investigate the Pygmalion effect, it is inconceivable that a study of the effects of standardized testing, conceived in the 1960s and planned and executed in the 1970s, would not have been influenced by thinking about teachers' expectations and the influence of test information on the formation of those expectations. While our study did pay special attention to teacher expectations, its scope was much wider. It was planned and carried out in a much broader framework, one in which we set out to examine the impact of a standardized testing program, not just on teachers, but also on school practices, students, and students' parents.