¶ … Teach to the Test
As William Hatfield presciently warned in 1916, when the ultra-efficiency of industrialization first begin threatening the independence of educators to craft curricula, "an education that focuses on memorising information to ensure reaching a single benchmark is an inadequate measure of success" because while "twelve years of school life has made [students] adept at memorizing & #8230; many of them are novices in thinking" (Mills, 2008). Since disastrous passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, which mandated standards-based educational practices and required states to devise testing devices to gauge student achievement, Hatfield's admonition has been proven to be disturbingly accurate. Since standardized testing became standard operating procedure for America's public school system, countless teachers have expressed their mounting dissatisfaction with the rigid and formulaic curriculum structures imposed on school districts by state legislatures. As an education major anxiously awaiting my opportunity to teach South Carolina's third graders, I share in the general consensus that teaching to the test is an unsustainable philosophy with far more drawbacks than advantages. However, because our state currently administers the Palmetto Assessment of State Standards (PASS) test to students in grades 3 through 8, it is crucial that I do not let my own preconceived notions influence my judgment regarding such a complex and confounding issue. To that end, I have reviewed a total of five research-based articles published in scholarly journals during the last five years, in an attempt to objectively analyze the trend of teaching to the test in the proper context.
In a 2011 article entitled Teach to the Test? which was published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, standardized testing researcher Richard P. Phelps thoughtfully examines the concept of mutual exclusivity which pervades the debate over testing-based curricula. By forcefully challenging the commonly held "assumption by many critics that test preparation and good teaching are mutually exclusive" (Phelps, 2011), the author succeeds in drawing a distinction between rote and ineffective memorization drills and inspired lesson crafting which also adheres to statewide standards. Phelps holds...
According to reports coming out of Japan, teasing is often associated with poor performance, and may be instigated by teachers in many cases. America, it should be noted, tens to have an anti-intellectualism streak in its politics and nature, while Japan tends towards the opposite. It seems possible that the fact that Woodsa and Wolkeb discovered that less intelligent, lower class, and rural children were significantly more likely to
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