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Testing

High Stakes Testing               

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High Stakes Testing

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High Stakes Testing

Examinations measure the academic performance of students in relation to the acquired information. However, they take various forms, among them high stakes testing. These are tests whose outcomes are determinants of significant events in life and who critics argue they lead to teaching for tests. Consequently, they are arguments for and against high stake tests.

High stake tests are exams that base significant decisions on individual student’s achievement and teacher performance. Therefore, stake tests carry severe consequences for learners and educators. For example, poor achievement in a high stakes test could imply teachers losing their jobs or students having to repeat a class. Contrary, a higher performance might suggest proceeding to the next level and enacted job securities for teachers.  With such, high stake testing poses benefits for educators and leaners. However, several unintended outcomes for the students, teachers, schools, and the curriculum are bound to occur with these types of tests.

Critics to high stake testing specify that high stakes tests lead to teaching to the test instead of developing the real learning environment to increase the test scores. Due to high stakes testing, schools spend a lot of time preparing for tests (Jones, 2018). Thus, if something is compelling and favourable to the students understanding of a concept, but it is not examinable in the high stake tests, teachers might not have the incentive to explain such an idea. For instance, the No Child Left behind Law (NCLB) only examines math, science, and reading which implies that other subjects including history, arts, social studies and physical attention are far given less attention.

There are arguments for and against high stake tests. Arguments for the tests are that they assure quality education, facilitate teacher evaluation, and increases motivation for learning while arguments against it that it promotes cheating, it does not value diversity, and it increases stress in the learners. High stake testing ensures that learners have access to a quality education because it maintains the standards set forth by the government. Thus, schools provide that their teaching and learning processes teaching meet the expected requirements. With high stake tests, teachers can be evaluated on their work performance. Based on the classroom grades achieved, teachers can be fired from the job or get a raise. High stake tests put pressure on the educators and on the students encouraging them to concentrate more on high academic achievements to avoid negative consequences (Nichols, 2018). Since a single exam is capable of changing the course of a student’s life or undermine the job security of an educator, students and teachers are tempted to do anything including cheating to ensure high test scores. There is a range of disparities in the students taking high stake test. For example, students are of diverse cultural backgrounds, different thinking and learning styles, varying past life experiences, and varying levels of proficiency. Yet, the high stakes test treat all learners as if they were identical given the nature of standardized. High stake tests cause stress in the leaners due to exam anxiety (Shriberg & Kruger, 2018). Stress harms the students mentally and psychologically, making it impossible for them to involve their thinking processes appropriately minimizing capacity to respond to the high stakes tests.

 

 

 

 

References

Jones, B. D. (2018). The unintended outcomes of high-stakes testing. High Stakes Testing: New Challenges and Opportunities for School Psychology, 65–86. doi: 10.4324/9780203836583-5

Nichols, S. L. (2018). High-stakes testing: Does it increase achievement? High Stakes Testing: New Challenges and Opportunities for School Psychology, 47–64. doi: 10.4324/9780203836583-4

Shriberg, D., & Kruger, L. J. (2018). Introduction and overview: High stakes testing. High Stakes Testing: New Challenges and Opportunities for School Psychology, 1–6. doi: 10.4324/9780203836583-1

 

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