Additional Thoughts on Standardized Testing
Jackie brings up a good point in the comments to my previous post about standardized testing. Standardized tests are unlikely to go away, for it IS true that some standard sort of yardstick is needed to accurately assess knowledge and ability. We all took the SAT to get into college, and took the GRE to be accepted to the graduate program. Frankly, an A at one school isn’t equal to an A elsewhere. Some schools are better than others, and we do need some form of accountability and some, however limited and questionable, quantitative measures of comparison.
But while those SATs and GREs were certainly “high stakes”, test scores alone do not determine whether or not a student will be accepted into college. College admission boards rightly look at grades, extra curricular activities, essays, and letters of recommendation when making these types of decisions. Unfortunately, our public schools no longer are. A single CRCT score can and will prevent a student from promotion to the next grade. SATs and GREs can be retaken, and are weighted against other criteria, but these live or die tests are really a problem for me.
Candice