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Bob Sternberg starts off this TEDx Talks strong with talking about having a test score be who you are. If you don't perform well on a test that is how you are seen in school. That will follow you and you could be stuck there for the whole time you are in school. He then next said "test scores were very highly correlated with socioeconomic status."

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None of the Above - Why Standardized Testing Fails: Bob Sternberg at TEDxOStateU

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This meme shows that the standardized tests are designed for the students to fail. Forgetting the fact that some of the teachers may be a little behind in the curriculum and the test has material the students don't know, but even if you know all the content, it is still created for you to struggle. Students are already stressed with the regular tests and assignments in school, and now adding a huge test that takes hours to complete and it is over the course of a few days does not help their stress.

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This article was written in March of 2021 which was during the pandemic. Miguel Cordona who is an American Educator, has been making an effort to use tests properly. He speaks about if we really care about closing gaps in educational opportunity and achievement and we can use these tests to help us with that. The pandemic exposed existing structural inequalities that are driving racial disparities. These tests can also be used to make sure the students are receiving quality education.

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Standardized tests aren't the problem, it's how we use them | Brookings

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Tests will tell us the extent of the damage of the last 12 months.

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Cancel the Tests the Students Just Went Through a Pandemic!

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Cancel the Tests the Students Just Went Through a Pandemic!

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Learning through COVID-19 had many difficulties for everyone involved. Nothing can replace being in the classroom with your students. This video It's Time to #CancelTheTests was made a year ago. The speaker wanted all standardized tests to be canceled for that year. She explained that the tests are not even reliable and with everything that happened with the pandemic it is just too much work. It takes away the time and the resources that the students need. The data from these tests are going to be flawed. "Why would we put our students and schools and educators though more stress for information we cannot use and for data that won't come back until long after the school year has ended."

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Standardized Testing

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Standardized Testing

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With so many policies and laws in effect, standardized testing will be around for awhile. They are used in order to determine if a student is meeting the requirements. There are advantages and disadvantages to standardized testing. Some advantages are, that there is a way to make sure the teachers are being held accountable and it is regardless of the district or state and comparing student test scores to different schools. Examples of the disadvantages are, how students are feeling the day of the test is a huge factor and. students have test anxiety.

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Standardized tests are used in order to determine if a student is meeting the average requirements. It can also rank a student alongside their classmates, other students within the state and even the country. These tests come at many different levels, starting in elementary school and continuing onwards throughout secondary and sometimes post-secondary education. Standardized tests measure a variety of subjects including English, math, history and science. These are core subjects which a student will rely on somewhat no matter what type of profession they end up having, making them core subjects which are necessary to build off of year after year.

Articles in: Standardized Tests

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Standardized tests are used in order to determine if a student is meeting the average requirements. It can also rank a student alongside their classmates, other students within the state and even the country. These tests come at many different levels, starting in elementary school and continuing onwards throughout secondary and sometimes post-secondary education.

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This article talks about the No Child Left Behind Act and Every Student Succeeds Act. It says that these policies are the reason that it is so difficult to change the ways of standardized testing. "Standardized tests should be used as a "flashlight" on what works in education not as "a hammer" to force outcomes." This was a statement said by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. These standardized tests put so much pressure on the students and the teachers and there should be a more balanced approach with these test scores. We can't just measure changes in test scores with different tests, we need to monitor their progress over time.

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Standardized tests should be used as "a flashlight" on what works in education not as "a hammer" to force outcomes, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said during a speech last week.

The statement reflects a shift in thinking since annual testing became federal law more than 20 years ago, and it echoes past comments from Cardona, who warned states against using 2022 NAEP scores punitively when they showed steep drops in reading and math in September.

But federal policies stemming from the two-decade-old No Child Left Behind Act and its successor, the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act, make it difficult for states to use standardized tests in any other way, policy experts say. And despite changing attitudes, there's little indication that the nation's schools will move away from the current form of test-based accountability anytime soon.

"It doesn't matter what the sentiment is," said Jack Schneider, an education professor and policy analyst at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell who is also an advocate for including alternative measures like school climate, teacher ability, and school resources in accountability policies. "The law is structured so that it really isn't much of a flashlight."

Cardona did not announce any new testing-related policies or plans for the Education Department in his Jan. 24 speech to educators, so it's unclear if the agency plans to address concerns about test-based accountability through grants, waivers, or rulemaking. The department hasn't announced any plans to revise standardized testing policy.

Still, his words reflect ever-changing opinions about standardized tests and what role they should play in evaluating school performance.

"He's trying to bridge two eras," Schneider said. "Right now, we are still very much in the era of test-based accountability because that's the law. He also recognizes that's not going to persuade very many people for much longer as a mechanism for school improvement."

The lasting impact of No Child Left Behind

The debate over school accountability and standardized testing has been going on for over half a century, said Daniel Koretz, an education professor at Harvard University who has dedicated his research to high-stakes testing.

The original designers of standardized tests envisioned the tests as a way to measure individual students' performance, not as an aggregate measure of schools' performance, Koretz said.

They "were adamant that these tests cannot provide a complete measure of what we care about, what our goals of education are," he said. "They're necessarily incomplete."

Despite that original intention, states and the federal government found standardized tests to be an efficient way to determine whether schools were performing to standards. And test proponents have said they're necessary for ensuring English learners, students with disabilities, students of color, and low-income students don't fall behind.

The government's role in using tests to evaluate schools-rather than individual students-was solidified when former President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002.

The law, which had bipartisan backing and functioned as an update to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, required states to test students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school with a goal of bringing them all to a state-determined level of proficiency by the 2013-14 school year.

It also established sanctions for schools that failed to stay on track and make "adequate yearly progress" with test scores. The law gave states-among other measures-the power to shut down schools that missed achievement targets several years in a row. Waivers to the law during the Obama administration loosened some of these rules but also required states to set up systems to evaluate teachers in part based on student test performance.

"That enormously ramped up the pressure, particularly in low-achieving schools," Koretz said. "At that point, teachers really had no choice. They really could either fail, cut corners, or cheat."

The law was later reauthorized as the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015, which loosened the federal government's role in K-12 schools, removed requirements that states evaluate teacher performance based on student outcomes, and gave states power to decide what should happen to schools that miss performance targets.

But the law maintained the standardized testing requirements established in NCLB.

"The heart of NCLB, which is test-based accountability, remains in place," Schneider said.

Advocating for a balanced approach

Some who oppose test-based accountability aren't against standardized tests themselves. Large-scale standardized tests are useful in measuring how students in a certain state or across the country are performing compared to their peers.

But they are also limited. Critics say they offer only a snapshot of a student's understanding of core subjects, making it difficult to determine whether a student performed poorly because they weren't taught the material or because of outside factors like their mood, health, or home life.

Instead, testing experts say they'd like to see a more balanced approach to standardized tests. That means having more coherence among the large number of state and national assessments so they build off each other and can better help inform instruction and curriculum, said Scott Marion, the executive director of the Center for Assessment, a nonprofit focused on improving assessment and accountability practices.

It also means measuring students' progress over time and the skills they've acquired, not just changes in their scores from one test to another. Tests also need to provide feedback to teachers more quickly to be useful, Marion said.

"I don't care that [a student] went up six points-that might be good," Marion said. "But did she learn how to better organize her paragraphs, vary her sentence structure, things like that?"

States can help ease the burden of accountability on schools by using the more balanced approach, and some states have, Marion said. But unless there are changes to federal law there will always be pressure for schools to produce high test scores.

The political outlook

Cardona's message indicates a shifting perspective on the role standardized tests play in society, but not much has been done to actually change the federal law that lays out standardized tests' role.

The Education Department could establish waivers, giving states more flexibility to create pilot projects to improve testing systems. And Congress could rewrite the law to put less of a focus on accountability.

But ultimately improvement would require more respect for education, Koretz said.

"Education has a very low status in this country," he said. "A lot of policymakers don't respect teachers or any other educators. They don't trust them. So, who are you going to trust to go in and evaluate schools if you don't trust educators?"

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Education Secretary: Standardized Tests Should No Longer Be a 'Hammer'

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Standardized tests should be used as "a flashlight" on what works in education not as "a hammer" to force outcomes, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said during a speech last week.