Rogers 1

Michelle Rogers

Dr. Peterson

EDFD 7307

19 June 2017

Theme 4: Testing

Whenever I think of Critical Issues in Education, the first thing that comes to mind is

subjecting students standardized testing. According to Alfie Kohn, students are participating in

standardizing testing as young as six years old (Kohn). When asked the question, does

standardized testing make students smarter? I cannot help but to strongly disagree. Students do

not get smarter due to testing, and if anything, they are losing out on meaningful lessons in the

classroom because of the teachers overwhelming need to teach to the test. In my opinion,

teaching to the test does not benefit the students nor the educator, if anything, it demoralizes

authentic learning, similar to concepts in the song Not on the Test. Finally, I strongly agree

with Kohns opinion in that standardized testing can't measure initiative, creativity,

imagination, conceptual thinking,

curiosity, effort, irony, judgment, commitment, nuance, good will, ethical reflection, or a host of

other valuable dispositions and attributes (Kohn).

From my personal experience, standardized testing has put an extreme burden on my

lessons and my time management in the classroom. Since my school focuses so much on test

scores for receiving data on improvements, growth, etc. as do other schools, teachers who teach

an EOC (End-of-Course Assessment class) such as myself are forced to take data on practice

quizzes once a week using an EOC practice website. I believe that my school leaders decision in

these forceful lessons are due to their desires to make sure teachers are teaching to the test, but
 Rogers 2

my students grow bored of the assignments, finds them uninteresting, and therefore refuses to

take these assignments seriously despite my efforts to motivate them to do so (that is a whole

other issue that Kohn brings to my attention). Due to this, I am forced to miss one lesson a week

for these assignments when I could be teaching a more meaningful lesson.

Finally, standardized testing comes as the time that the state schedules so this past year,

standardized testing was given to my 9th grade students three weeks before the course was over.

This left me with three weeks afterwards that my students felt like the class was over and it also

took three weeks away from meaningful lessons.