Download or read book The Unintended Consequences of High Stakes Testing written by Gail M. Jones and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2003-04-09 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To better understand how high-stakes accountability has influenced teaching and learning, this book takes an in-depth look at the myriad consequences that high-stakes tests hold for students, teachers, administrators, and the public. By focusing on these tests and spending large amounts of time on test preparation and driving teachers to teach low-level, rote memorization, schools are essentially wiping out non-tested subjects such as science, social studies, physical education, and the arts. Although testing is promoted as a strategy for improving education for all, research shows that testing has differential effects on students with special needs, minority students, students living in poverty, and those for whom English is a second language. The Unintended Consequences of High Stakes Testing unpacks the assumptions and philosophical foundations on which testing policies are based. The authors' arguments are grounded in extensive interviews and research. Through an examination of research, these authors show that high-stakes testing promotes students' dependence on extrinsic motivation at the cost of intrinsic motivation and the associated love of learning—which has tangible impacts on their education and lives. Features: -Examines how high stakes testing from the perspectives of teachers, students, and adminstrators. -Considers how testing impacts the curriculum including tested subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics as well as non-tested subjects such as science, social studies, physical education, and the arts. -Documents how teachers and administrators engage in test preparation and discusses ethical and unethical test preparation practices. -Reviews the evolution of testing through history and how it mpacts the curriculum. -Examines the differential effects of testing on students with special needs, minority students, students living in poverty, and those for whom English is a second language.
Download or read book Teacher Involvement in High Stakes Language Testing written by Daniel Xerri and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-02 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book advocates that teachers should play an active role in high-stakes language testing and that more weight should be given to teacher judgement. This is likely to increase the formative potential of high-stakes tests and provide teachers with a sense of ownership. The implication is that the knowledge and skills they develop by being involved in these tests will feed into their own classroom practices. The book also considers the arguments against teacher involvement, e.g. the contention that teacher involvement might entrench the practice of teaching to the test, or that teachers should not be actively involved in high-stakes language testing because their judgement is insufficiently reliable. Using contributions from a wide range of international educational contexts, the book proposes that a lack of reliability in teacher judgement is best addressed by means of training and not by barring educators from participating in high-stakes language testing. It also argues that their involvement in testing helps teachers to bolster confidence in their own judgement and develop their assessment literacy. Moreover, teacher involvement empowers them to play a role in reforming high-stakes language testing so that it is more equitable and more likely to enhance classroom practices. High-stakes language tests that adopt such an inclusive approach facilitate more effective learning on the part of teachers, which ultimately benefits all their students.
Download or read book High Stakes written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1998-12-16 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone is in favor of "high education standards" and "fair testing" of student achievement, but there is little agreement as to what these terms actually mean. High Stakes looks at how testing affects critical decisions for American students. As more and more tests are introduced into the country's schools, it becomes increasingly important to know how those tests are usedâ€"and misusedâ€"in assessing children's performance and achievements. High Stakes focuses on how testing is used in schools to make decisions about tracking and placement, promotion and retention, and awarding or withholding high school diplomas. This book sorts out the controversies that emerge when a test score can open or close gates on a student's educational pathway. The expert panel: Proposes how to judge the appropriateness of a test. Explores how to make tests reliable, valid, and fair. Puts forward strategies and practices to promote proper test use. Recommends how decisionmakers in education shouldâ€"and should notâ€"use test results. The book discusses common misuses of testing, their political and social context, what happens when test issues are taken to court, special student populations, social promotion, and more. High Stakes will be of interest to anyone concerned about the long-term implications for individual students of picking up that Number 2 pencil: policymakers, education administrators, test designers, teachers, and parents.
Download or read book Changing Language Teaching Through Language Testing written by Liying Cheng and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-10-06 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been growing interest in recent years in the influence of tests on teaching and learning - a phenomenon commonly referred to as 'washback'. Despite persistent assertions about its nature and scope, empirical studies investigating test washback are still limited in number, and few of these make use of both qualitative and quantitative methods in washback research. This volume presents a study of how the introduction of the 1996 Hong Kong Certificate of Education in English - a high stakes public examination - impacted on classroom teaching and learning in Hong Kong secondary schools. The washback effect was observed initially at the larger 'macro' level, among different stakeholder groups within the Hong Kong educational context; and also at the more local 'micro' level, in terms of teachers' attitudes, teaching content and classroom interactions. This study: provides a theoretical background to the washback concept, discusses the need for empirical investigation of washback, describes the use of a mixed methodology approach in washback research, offers insights into the role of tests as agents of innovation and change in the classroom and broader educational context. This volume will be of particular relevance to language test developers and researchers interested in the consequential validity of tests; it will also be of interest to teachers, curriculum designers, policymakers and others in education concerned with the interface between language testing and teaching practices/programs. Book jacket.
Download or read book The Black White Test Score Gap written by Christopher Jencks and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " The test score gap between blacks and whites—on vocabulary, reading, and math tests, as well as on tests that claim to measure scholastic aptitude and intelligence--is large enough to have far-reaching social and economic consequences. In their introduction to this book, Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips argue that eliminating the disparity would dramatically reduce economic and educational inequality between blacks and whites. Indeed, they think that closing the gap would do more to promote racial equality than any other strategy now under serious discussion. The book offers a comprehensive look at the factors that contribute to the test score gap and discusses options for substantially reducing it. Although significant attempts have been made over the past three decades to shrink the test score gap, including increased funding for predominantly black schools, desegregation of southern schools, and programs to alleviate poverty, the median black American still scores below 75 percent of American whites on most standardized tests. The book brings together recent evidence on some of the most controversial and puzzling aspects of the test score debate, including the role of test bias, heredity, and family background. It also looks at how and why the gap has changed over the past generation, reviews the educational, psychological, and cultural explanations for the gap, and analyzes its educational and economic consequences. The authors demonstrate that traditional explanations account for only a small part of the black-white test score gap. They argue that this is partly because traditional explanations have put too much emphasis on racial disparities in economic resources, both in homes and in schools, and on demographic factors like family structure. They say that successful theories will put more emphasis on psychological and cultural factors, such as the way black and white parents teach their children to deal with things they do not know or understand, and the way black and white children respond to the same classroom experiences. Finally, they call for large-scale experiments to determine the effects of schools' racial mix, class size, ability grouping, and other policies. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Claude Steele, Ronald Ferguson, William G. Bowen, Philip Cook, and William Julius Wilson. "
Download or read book High stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning written by David W. Hursh and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2008 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that education in the States and Britain has been radically transformed, through efforts to create curricular standards, and through an emphasis on accountability measured by standardized tests, and efforts to introduce market competition and private services into educational systems.
Download or read book International Handbook of Research on Teachers and Teaching written by Lawrence J. Saha and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-04-17 with total page 1192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Handbook of Research on Teachers and Teaching provides a fresh look at the ever changing nature of the teaching profession throughout the world. This collection of over 70 articles addresses a wide range of issues relevant for understanding the present educational climate in which the accountability of teachers and the standardized testing of students have become dominant.
Download or read book Testing in American Schools written by and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Global Testing Culture written by William C. Smith and published by Symposium Books Ltd. This book was released on 2016-01-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past thirty years have seen a rapid expansion of testing, exposing students worldwide to tests that are now, more than ever, standardized and linked to high-stakes outcomes. The use of testing as a policy tool has been legitimized within international educational development to measure education quality in the vast majority of countries worldwide. The embedded nature and normative power of high-stakes standardized testing across national contexts can be understood as a global testing culture. The global testing culture permeates all aspects of education, from financing, to parental involvement, to teacher and student beliefs and practices. The reinforcing nature of the global testing culture leads to an environment where testing becomes synonymous with accountability, which becomes synonymous with education quality. Underlying the global testing culture is a set of values identified from the increasing literature on world culture. These include: education as a human right, academic intelligence, faith in science, decentralization, and neoliberalism. Each of these values highlights different aspects of the dialogue in support of high-stakes standardized testing. The wide approval of these values and their ability to legitimate various aspects of high-stakes testing reinforces the taken-for-granted notion that such tests are effective and appropriate education practices. However, a large body of literature emphasizes the negative unintended consequences – teaching to the test, reshaping the testing pool, the inequitable distribution of school resources and teachers’ attention, and reconstructing the role of the student, teacher, and parent – commonly found when standardized, census-based tests are combined with high-stakes outcomes for educators or students. This book problematizes this culture by providing critical perspectives that challenge the assumptions of the culture and describe how the culture manifests in national contexts. The volume makes it clear that testing, per se, is not the problem. Instead it is how tests are administered, used or misused, and linked to accountability that provide the global testing culture with its powerful ability to shape schools and society and lead to its unintended, undesirable consequences.
Download or read book Assessing the Current State of Education in the Caribbean written by Bissessar, Charmaine and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To meet the various needs of students, administrative policies and instructional techniques must consistently be improved upon. This allows schools to deliver a higher quality of education to students. Assessing the Current State of Education in the Caribbean is a pivotal reference source for the latest research on recent developments and innovations for schools in the Caribbean region. Focusing on teacher leadership, learning assessment techniques, and technology uses, this book is ideally designed for educators, school administrators, professionals, and researchers interested in recent developments within the education sector.
Download or read book The Child s Creation of a Pictorial World written by Claire Golomb and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the development of drawing and painting from several currently dominant theoretical perspectives and examines empirical data on the art work of children who are ordinary, talented, emotionally disturbed, and atypically developed due to
Download or read book Educating Hearts and Minds written by Catherine C. Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-27 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do children become eager, motivated learners and caring, responsible citizens? Educating Hearts and Minds, first published in 1995, is a portrait of Japanese preschool and early elementary education which examines these questions. Its thesis - which will surprise many Americans - is that Japanese schools are successful because they meet children's needs for friendship, belonging, and contribution. This book brings to life what actually happens inside Japanese classrooms. What do children learn? How do they learn? What values are emphasised, and how are they taught? In a sharp departure from most previous accounts, this book suggests that Japanese education succeeds because all children - not just the brightest or best-behaved - somehow come to feel like valued members of the school community. Ironically, Japanese teachers credit John Dewey and other progressive Western educators for many of the techniques that make Japanese schools both caring and challenging. This book brings to a wider readership the voices of Japanese classroom teachers - voices that are at once deeply consonant with Western aspirations and deeply provocative.
Download or read book Collateral Damage written by Sharon L. Nichols and published by Harvard Education Press. This book was released on 2007-03-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on their extensive research, Nichols and Berliner document and categorize the ways that high-stakes testing threatens the purposes and ideals of the American education system. For more than a decade, the debate over high-stakes testing has dominated the field of education. This passionate and provocative book provides a fresh perspective on the issue and powerful ammunition for opponents of high-stakes tests. Their analysis is grounded in the application of Campbell’s Law, which posits that the greater the social consequences associated with a quantitative indicator (such as test scores), the more likely it is that the indicator itself will become corrupted—and the more likely it is that the use of the indicator will corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor. Nichols and Berliner illustrate both aspects of this “corruption,” showing how the pressures of high-stakes testing erode the validity of test scores and distort the integrity of the education system. Their analysis provides a coherent and comprehensive intellectual framework for the wide-ranging arguments against high-stakes testing, while putting a compelling human face on the data marshalled in support of those arguments.
Download or read book Teacher Involvement in High Stakes Language Testing written by Daniel Xerri and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book advocates that teachers should play an active role in high-stakes language testing and that more weight should be given to teacher judgement. This is likely to increase the formative potential of high-stakes tests and provide teachers with a sense of ownership. The implication is that the knowledge and skills they develop by being involved in these tests will feed into their own classroom practices. The book also considers the arguments against teacher involvement, e.g. the contention that teacher involvement might entrench the practice of teaching to the test, or that teachers should not be actively involved in high-stakes language testing because their judgement is insufficiently reliable. Using contributions from a wide range of international educational contexts, the book proposes that a lack of reliability in teacher judgement is best addressed by means of training and not by barring educators from participating in high-stakes language testing. It also argues that their involvement in testing helps teachers to bolster confidence in their own judgement and develop their assessment literacy. Moreover, teacher involvement empowers them to play a role in reforming high-stakes language testing so that it is more equitable and more likely to enhance classroom practices. High-stakes language tests that adopt such an inclusive approach facilitate more effective learning on the part of teachers, which ultimately benefits all their students.
Download or read book Contradictions of School Reform written by Linda McNeil and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parents and community activists around the country complain that the education system is failing our children. They point to students' failure to master basic skills, even as standardized testing is widely employed in efforts to improve the educational system. Contradictions of Reform is a provocative look into the reality, for students as well as teachers, of standardized testing. A detailed account of how student improvement and teacher effectiveness are evaluated, Contradictions of Reform argues compellingly that the preparation of students for standardized tests engenders teaching methods that vastly compromise the quality of education.
Download or read book A Companion to Research in Teacher Education written by Michael A. Peters and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This state-of-the-art Companion assembles and assesses the extant research available on teacher education and provides clear guidelines on future directions. It addresses an important need in a collection that will be of value for teachers, teacher educators, policymakers and politicians. There has been little sustained, long-term or systematic research to provide empirical support for the broad aspects of teacher education policy, largely because such research has been chronically underfunded and based on traditional practitioner knowledge. Many of the changes to teacher education are contentious and yet are occurring in rapid succession. These policies and movements have important consequences for education, teacher quality and the future of the teaching profession. At the same time, the policies and initiatives that support these changes seem to be based more on ideology, business interests and tradition than on research and empirical findings. The nature, quality and effectiveness of teacher preparation have increasingly become a central focus for education policy worldwide in a fiercely argued debate among governments, think-tanks, world policy agencies, education researchers and teacher organisations.
Download or read book Schools Make a Difference written by Charles Teddlie and published by . This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
