What's Up with High Stakes Testing?

High stakes testing was mandated to assess both teachers and students performance. However, for many school districts, high stakes testing has become the sole determinant for the quality of a teacher's performance. Consequently, this causes teachers to "teach to the test." Therefore, “we have a misalignment, ... because testing has now replaced instruction and that’s a bad place for us to be.” according to NBC News journalist, Daniella Silva, in her article "Education Experts Debate High Stakes Testing in Public Schools". Learning has become confined to standards that are assessed on these high stakes testing. High stakes testing has become the new curriculum mold. It is explained that, "when testing becomes the center piece of a teacher evaluation, people are focusing on rote memorization." I find this to be exceptionally true. As a student who has gone though various high stakes test, I have many times crammed information through memorization for my exam. This information never made it to my long term memory and I honestly did not really learn the information.  I learned to pass the exam.

The article states, “The problem is today we are using [high stakes testing] only solely for accountability purposes, linking student test scores to teacher performances". It is difficult to base a teachers capabilities on the student preparedness and performance. Teachers are being validated by the actions of others, their students. I find this to be very unfair because teachers do not have any real control over how their students implement information taught to them. In addition, there is no other profession that is validated by the performance of someone secondary to the actual employee. Why is it that the teaching profession not treated as all other professions?

I believe that learning should involve discovery and application. Teachers should teach students a wide variety of knowledge and essential skills that can be applied to testing. Therefore, instructors wouldn't be teaching to the test but would teach students to implement their information correctly. This will allow students to actually learn information for long term uses.

~Ejana Bennet