There were a lot of interesting points that were brought up in this chapter. I completely agree with the point about how when students actually do well on given tests, the students are not given a pat on the back nor the teachers are congratulated. The first thing they do is make the tests harder. It is almost like no one is ever satisfied with the results. When students do well, the public start to question whether the exams are too easy. When students do poorly, the public starts pointing fingers and criticizing the quality of the schools.
This chapter also goes on to point out the flaws about the No Child Left Behind Act. I think that the No Child Left Behind Act is unrealistic. I feel like with all these standardized testing, students lose the meaning of learning. I feel like as years go on, students are required to take more and more standardized testings and they are wasting so much time preparing for a test and taking a test, that they don’t have the time to really learn and enjoy it. I also agree with the book on how the board of education goes through all that trouble testing and evaluating each student and picking out the ones that are falling behind, but they don’t do much to help. They spend more money and so much time testing them and embarrassing them than using that money to help the students.
I went to a korean SAT summer school when I was a Junior in H.S. We had 2 tests every single day and we were physically punished and embarrassed by our peers if we did poorly on those 2 tests. I feel like this can relate to the concept of NCLB very well. The SAT school spent more time testing us than actually TEACHING us. Instead, I spent all my time there being tested and being punished. I felt like I learned absolutely nothing and my time there was not used efficiently at all. I felt like the people who needed the help were just discouraged and were not given any helping hand at all.
As I was reading, some of these questions came to mind:
Will there ever be an alternative that everyone is satisfied with? Do you feel like standardized testing actually helps more than it hurts students?
Do you feel like standardized testing does push and motivate students to study and in result learn something?
Or do you think students can do that without the use of standardized testing?