Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Issues in Standardized Testing Prompt 1




Mnemonics:
-          Pro:   The students will easily be able to remember this information in the mnemonic form for a test because it organizes and forms relationships with other information.
-          Con:  The student will memorize the mnemonic and not learn the concepts of the information displayed in the mnemonic.

A student might be really intelligent in the classroom, but she gets anxiety when taking tests, especially a high stakes test. If she does not pass this high stakes test then she is required to receive accommodations. If the student is given these accommodations when she does not need them learned helplessness can occur. When the student is given these easy alternatives she might act like she’s not as intelligent so that she can take the easy way out. She is also not being challenged when given these accommodations, so she learns to act like she is not as intelligent.

A consistent learning goal for standardized tests would be to make sure that students are taught all required material that would be on a standardized test. To do this a teacher’s instructional strategies would have to contain no hands on activities and they could not contain any teaching that does not satisfy the standards.

1 comment:

  1. I like the information you break down at the beginning of the post. However, I'm a bit unclear on the last part. This is similar to how we discussed having consistency between your theory of learning, method of instruction, and method of assessment.

    Another way to ask that question (and we did that on Monday of the Assessment week and Monday of the Standardized Testing Week, if you look at those folders) is A. What do standardized tests imply about how learning happens? B. Given that, how would you instruct? So, in class, students decided that standardized tests imply that learning happens individually, in the mind, and that process isn't necssarily important--product is....

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