Student Testing in Elementary Schools in America Essay

Student Testing in Elementary Schools in America - Essay Example The curriculum as of today is far ahead of what the school system was earlier. From learning by rote, now the child is allowed more interaction and freedom to gain knowledge from sources other than the school. The curriculum guides and text books are chosen today by the state and they reflect the State's learning standard and benchmarks for a given grade level. To gauge the progress of a child, there are tests to determine the adequate yearly progress which have to fulfill certain standardized goals by which States and school districts assess the child's progress academically.( Armstrong Thomas, 1987) When there are about twenty or thirty children of diverse learning needs in a class, the academic strengths and weaknesses of a child are most evident during tests. This is referred to as MAP or measures of academic progress. Tests are not an absolute indication of the child's progress or capacity for knowledge. The scoring process is a comparison of the child's responses with his or her peers. Instead of providing a statistical comparison of the child's abilities, it would be better to focus on the level of the skills that the child has acquired, instead of assessing the results of a child's test with a checklist of skills that are expected in a particular grade (Chris Shera, 2007). It is during interpretative question tests that disconnect between classroom activities and results in the end of grade tests required, is evident. Students are not empowered to study anything outside the requisite classroom curriculum. The program needs a balanced literary approach to maximize the child's ability to view tests in positive (Kosar, 2005) fashion. Then an improvement will be seen in the standardized reading and language test scores. The downside of testing : It is important to know that test results can go wrong for a variety of reasons. We can actually question the validity of the entire test result for many reasons. Some of these are elucidated below. 1. Most tests reward experience (Dunn, Rita and Dunn Kenneth, 1978). A child who has had repeated practice at a certain skill will naturally do it with a lot more ease than a child who has not had the benefit of frequent opportunities to do the same . 2. Children from cultural and socio economic minority groups are prone to poor performance on tests for the simple reason that the child may not relate to the subject comprehensively. For example, a child who does not speak English at home does not automatically think in that language and hence suffers when he is supposed to understand the nuances of a subject taught in English. 3. Children can be intimidated by the very prospect of a test at a younger age. The child's performance can suffer due to just the thought of doing a test. 4. Some children are not clued into writing within a particular time frame- especially in elementary schools - and dawdle over the test without finishing it. This does not mean that the child does not know the answer. 5. Some deterrents to academic progress could be a host of conditions that disrupt the normal learning process. These could range from language disorders, learning disabilities, dyslexia, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and

Team process feedback Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Team process feedback - Essay Example Having received our results, it was unanimously agreed that we would have posted a better performance had we keenly followed the rubric. We should have elaborated more on what was cast on the presentation slides. Furthermore, had we met physically as a whole group, it would have boosted our cohesion and thus the overall performance. Despite the busy schedules that each of us run on, we scored grade B+. Even though we were aiming higher than that, this was still commendable. Our group has remained steadfast with no major challenges. Tasks assigned to each member are executed as planned and in a timely manner with emails and texts providing an effective and timely means of communication. The group has further portrayed willingness to work and high levels of professionalism. Nonetheless, failure to practice before presentations could have cost us the lower than expected performance. I suppose that practicing prior to class presentation would have improved our performance. Weekly meetings would be useful to us as they would provide an opportunity to evaluate the assignments for the following class, assign each member a task and discuss our progress. This could be a brief meeting that would just seek to ensure that everyone is aware of how and what to do before breaking up for everyone to concentrate on their tasks. This could have made us not to forget to introduce the team members during the presentation which is one thing that I believe negatively affect ed our performance. Had we focused on the rubric, then such mistakes would not have occurred. We now appreciate that the rubric is a critical guide for professors in grading performance and therefore the need to follow it to the latter. Whereas group projects usually have numerous challenges, this group has proved the opposite right as we have not had issues with members not doing what they are assigned to