According to the ABC 13 Eyewitness recently in Houston, hundreds of parents have let their children to opt out of taking the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness or STAAR exams. (In Protest, Parents Keep Students Home during STAAR Test Days) For Texas, the STAAR test measures a students ability to move on to the next grade starting in 3rd grade. Within this passed year about 500 parents in Texas choose for their children to stay home from taking the STAAR tests. (Webmaster) Do parents have the right intentions? They believe that schools are more concerned about the test scores than their children from actually learning. In Texas, students must take the exam another day or receive a zero. (Webmaster) How could these parents keep …show more content…
Kevin Kumashiro presents in his article for The Progressive that “ The 2015 ‘Nation’s Report Card’ shows a decline in student's test scores in reading and mathematics.” Over the years, school mostly focuses on getting the right answer on high-stake tests scores don’t help students academic achievement. Herbert J. Walberg, agrees standardized testing is best to measure a students “educational goals.” (Walberg 1) Truly, in the results of testing haven’t done this. “The scores don’t provide very much useful information for evaluating a student's achievement” (Harris “and others” 1) Scores from a standardized test don’t measure a student achievement. Schools now don’t care about a student’s achievement due to standardized tests. According to Phillip Harris, arguing that standardized test does a “poor job” with measuring student's achievement. In addition Richard Rothstein, an education economist stated ‘Measurement of student achievement is complex-too complex for social science presently available.’ (Harris “and others” 1) These methods include standardized testing. Rothstein statement was made in 1998. More than a decade later, there is no easier way to evaluate student achievement. The great amount of testing that happens in public schools makes the scores on test carry the weight and schools depend on the number. Reducing the …show more content…
I feel the importance to acknowledge the wrong aspects of standardized testing, but also reveal the physiological aspect these test are doing with students. Test anxiety makes student sweat, shake, and twitch during a test. The big end of the year test tend to freak out a student. Testing starts in the 3rd grade according to the No Child Left Behind, passed by President Bush in 2001 stating all United States public school students must take these standardized tests. These tests have a huge impact on students starting in 3rd grade. In the same way, will continue through a students school career. Natasha K. Segool, a professor at the university of Harvard exposes “little research has been conducted” (Segool 489) with students for annual high-stakes tests and “whether or not students experience heightened anxiety/distress in relation to them.”(Segool 489). She reported “One study found students overwhelm felt stress, anxiety, worry and isolation as a result of testing” (Segool 490). Test anxiety involves students of all ages and there needs to be more work on how high-stakes test increases it. Smith Grinell and Colette Rabin associate professors at San Jose State University, establish schools have a week to week preparation of the high-stakes testing. In the result, “much stress and worry...” (Grinell and Rabin 755) on the student's part which involves “damaging self-esteem...” (Grinell and Rabin 755)