Text Repsonse about Portfolios And Standardized Tests Pros And Cons

..

sed to test this type of knowledge and skill, they produce reliable, consistent scores. These tests are efficiently economical to develop, administer and score, and easy to standardize and norm. Developmental reading professors need to use standardized tests to determine students' reading, thinking, examination, and note taking skills so they can meet their student's needs for materials and instruction. Schools need to help prepare their students for standardized tests that would maintain the integrity of the school's curriculum and its methods of learning.

A way to do this, is to have students interact in workshops to help them take standardized tests. When children do take part in these workshops, they have gained more confidence and skills, and their test scores have improved significantly. But these workshops might not work the same way for all children. Children are told that these standardized tests are not important. But these tests are important and can affect a child's life. It can negatively affect students' motivation and does little to help children understand how to cope with feelings of fear and incompetence.

These test scores are often used to make decisions or judgements about students. Achievement test scores may determine placement for a child in a subject-area tracks and in remedial and enrichment classes. They could also determine whether a child should go on to the next grade level or be retained. Sometimes scores can be affected by a child's ethic, gender and economic background.

For instance, if a child has lived in the city his or her whole life and has never seen any other place, then he or she would not be able necessary to answer a question about the suburbs, if he or she has never seen what a suburb even looks like.That is why sometimes standardized tests could be considered an invalid achievement test. Teachers are held accountable for and schools are judged on how the students do on these standardized tests. It reflects back on them. An objective to standardized tests is to create a controlled environment so that differences in performance can be attributed to differences in the behavior being tested. Standardized test are often poorly constructed, leaving the possibility that differences in performance are due to problematic test items rather than to differences in a student's ability.

Also, standardized tests do not use a rubric like other assessment tools do. Rubrics appear more realistic than a standardized test score because they remove the illusion that social and intellectual traits can be measured with extreme precision, because they are easier to understand. It seems that some of the reasons standardized test can be so unreliable is because of examiner errors, over interpretation and failure to include certain age groups of students.Standardized tests are norm referenced and designed to measure a limited range of skills and talents across large populations.

When doing this research paper, I noticed that there was not a lot of information on standardized testing in a positive way of assessing students. During the five weeks of class discussions, I seemed to get the same interpretation from my peers. It does not seem to be the best affective way for teachers to assess their students any more. There are so many new assessment tools out there today, that teachers do not need their students to take these standardized tests any more.They can receive the same information about their students by using these new methods and they can assess what the teachers want them to assess.

For instance, the student portfolios is one of the new popular assessment tools teachers are now using in their classroom to assess their students on the way they want to. They do not have to administer, score and they will not be an unreliable or invalid way of assessing students. Plus, there is no culturally, social, gender, economic bias when using student portfolios. I am not a classroom teacher yet, so I have not personally used portfolios or administered any standardized tests except for the one we did in class.

So I can not say whether one way is better than the other from experience.But I can give my opinion based on what I have learned in class and research. It seems that standardized tests are unreliable and hard to understand on how to read the test scores and they do not really show a teacher what a child can do or does know. I did talk to some teachers on the elementary level about standardized tests and portfolios to get their opinion. All the teachers I talked do not like administering standardized tests to their students.

They do not understand why they have to give them because it does not show a student's true knowledge and ability of what they can do.I did ask them if they use any types of student portfolios in their classroom. It seems that the most popular type of portfolio to have in your classroom is a writing portfolio. The teachers say you and the student can learn so much from each other with portfolios. After reading all the research material, I received on portfolios, I think I would like to use portfolios for almost every subject that I would be teaching.

Because the teacher can learn how a child is doing in every subject while using these portfolios, plus the students can evaluate themselves on how well they are doing in every subject by looking through their portfolios month to month.I think eventually standardized test will not be a big stressor to school districts, teachers and students. Soon, other assessment tools will take the place of them and students will not be judged as a norm but as an individual. Bibliography References 1. Wolf, D.

(1989).Portfolio Assessment: Sampling Student Work. Educational Leadership, 35-39. 2. Evesh, J., LeMatieu, P.

, Wallace, R. (1992).Using Student Portfolios For A Public Accounting. The School Administrator, 45-52. 3.

Herbert, E. (1998).Lessons Learned About Student Portfolios. Phi Delta Kappan, 79, (8), 583-585.

4. Micklo, S. (1997).Math Portfolios In The Primary Grades. Childhood Education,73, (4), 194-199.

5. Pokay, P., Tayeh, C. (1996).Preservice Elementary Teachers: Building Portfolios Around Students' Writings.

Teaching Children Mathematics, 2, (5), 308-313. 6. Wiggins, G. (1989). A True Test: Toward More Authentic and Equitable Assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 703-712.

7. Spandel, V., Worthant, B. (1991).

Putting The Standardized Test Debate In Perspective. Educational Leadership, 413-421. 8. McConnell, M.

(1998). Summary of Floor Discussion. Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review, 4, (1), 125-126. 9. Hoachlander, E. (1998).

Assessing Assessment.Techniques, 73, (3), 14-16. 10. Barksdale, M., Rose, M. (1997).

Qualitative Assessment In Developmental Reading. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 28, (1), 34-55. 11.Taylor, K., Walton, S.

(1997). Co-opting Standardized Tests In The Service of Learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 78, (1), 66-70. 12. Murphy, S.

(1995).Revisioning Reading Assessment: Remembering To Learn From The Legacy of Reading Tests. The Clearing House, 68, (4), 235-239. 13. Czubaj, C. (1995).

Standardized Assessments Used In American Public Schools Are Invalid and Unreliable.Education, 116, (2), 180-185. 14. Hoyos, G. (1990).

Help Your Students Beat The Testing Game. Instructor, 105, (5), 60-64.15. Carter, K. (1998).

Taking Stock: Assessing Your Technology Program. Technology and Learning, 18, (9), 32-35. Education Essays.