Reflection

Throughout my experience from high school through college, I have had experiences with variety types of standardized tests. During high school students, I had to take the HSA tests that assessed my knowledge on English, American Government, Biology, and Mathematics. This type of test reflects on the teachers, which I feel is a type of stereotyping. This standardized test is to assess student knowledge of a subject and considering each student learns different; I do not feel that the test should reflect on the teacher. The scores from this test help provide feedback to the teacher in order for the teacher to change instruction based on the needs of their student. During my sophomore and senior year of high school, I took the SAT test, which was broken down into reading, writing, and mathematics. Honestly I know I did not do the best I could have done on this form of assessment because I did not understand the meaning of the test. Colleges assess this score in order to determine whether you are qualified enough to be accepted into the college or the program. I do find this form of assessment important because it does emphasize basic skills that students obtain over a period of time in high school. In college, I took a TEAS test for a nursing requirement, which assessed mathematics, science, and language arts. This test reminded me of the SAT exam so I did not understand why this form of assessment was necessary instead of encouraging students to submit their SAT scores. In recent experiences, I have taken a lot of praxis exams in PLT, business, biology, mathematics, writing, and reading. I find these tests challenging, but beneficial to the importance of assessing whether or not individuals are qualified to teach. It is important to make sure that each teacher has the understanding from the content area praxis requirements. Even during our MAT experiences, we have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to assess our personality traits. This type of assessment is just a fun little quiz, but can be beneficial for companies and schools because it provides them with an understanding of the applicant’s qualities. Overall, I find the praxis exams a great form of assessment because they are challenging enough to make sure that there is a clear understanding of the information with emphasis on the content. If I know that I did not pass it, it provided me with the feedback on the areas that I needed to study in order to improve upon. This type of test is not meant to make a student feel discouraged, but created to encourage learning.

Standardized tests are developed to assess student knowledge and provide teachers with feedback to adjust instruction based on their needs. This form of assessment assesses ability and achievement in understanding, comprehension, knowledge, and/or capability within a particular area (Wikipedia, 2015). A standardized test can help determine students’ strengths and weaknesses (Popham, 2014). This type of testing monitors the students’ progress over a period of time. Testing students also allows teachers to understand how effective their teaching has been (Popham, 2014). It is important that teachers have the resources to understand if their instruction methods are successful or need some alterations. On June 2, 2010, the Common Core State Standards was established by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association (Popham, 2014). This has played a major impact on instructional and assessment practices. CCSS has been developed to represent the curricular outcomes that are expected for the nation’s students (Popham, 2014).

The motivation for standardized test is finding a way to assess learning. There is so much encouragement for success for each student, but in order to understand the diversity of each student; standardized test had to be created. Each student learns different, but it is important to make sure that his or her needs are being met. Let me provide you with some history regarding standardized testing to have the truth. It began in the early 1900s in order to determine individual intelligence quotient (Fletcher, 2009). During WWI, the army needed a way to determine whether or not the soldiers were officer material (Fletcher, 2009). Standardized testing has developed dramatically over a period of time.

Work Cited

Fletcher, D. (2009, December 11). Standardized Testing. Retrieved May 21, 2015, from http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1947019,00.html

Popham, W. (2014). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know (7th ed.). Boston: Pearson.

List of standardized tests in the United States. (2015, May 1). Retrieved May 20, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_standardized_tests_in_the_United_States