Ashley
Posting Number: 1
Posting Number: 1
Topic: Education
Writer: Sam Dillon
Publication Name: The New York Times
Date of Publication: Sept. 2nd, 2010
Length: about 800 words
Summary: As a part of the Race to the Top grant competition, The US Department of Education recently awarded $330 million to two major groups that plan to test and design a new form of academic achievement testing that is computer based. It is intended to test "higher-order skills ignored by the multiple choice exams used in nearly every state" and to assess students' mastering of English and Math standards that several states have adopted lately. Currently, states have different testing systems and standards of what qualifies as proficient and what doesn't. There has been a recent push to unify these across the nation. In total, forty-four states including California are taking part in this experiment. The first group is composed of 25 states and the District of Columbia while the second includes 31 states, with some overlapping membership with the first group. Testing experts and professors are being called upon to work on providing tests with performance-based tasks to test students on their ability to utilize everything they've learned in real-world situations. The tests are expected to allow for more immediate feedback on what concepts the students have yet to fully understand. In turn, teachers will be expected to use these results to structure their lessons accordingly. According to the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, the new testing is expected to be up and running by the 2014-2015 school year.
Conclusion: The new system is expected to overturn the old standardized testing system of multiple-choice questions. The core purpose of the funding and the two groups leading this testing revolution is to create tests that challenge the minds of American students with real-world situations so that they can apply what they have learned instead of simply regurgitating facts. This event also reflects the growing influence of technology in everyday situations.
I think this is a powerful way to experiment the options of testing students in order to raise their level skills and understanding of the material they learn. Although it may bring down average test scores in schools, and therefore, lower GPAs, it will help the students in the long run which is one of the purposes of schooling. It is interesting to see that there is a huge consensus for this since forty-four states are agreeing.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that the students are going to get a large benefit from this new system of testing. This sounds like a much more efficient way to test students, and a faster way of getting scores back. Hopefully, this system will not be too expensive and will work well, but I am surprised that this system will take till the 2014-2015 school year.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like multiple choice questions are being replaced, but by what? Are they going to have more and more hand written assessments instead? Won't that leads to the fact the it will be even harder to grade written test fairly than the computer-scanned multiple choice? And won't that takes a tremendous to grade the exams? I guessed these questions can never be answered until the experts fininshed their testing, but I do hope that they can come up with a better way, not a more complicated way.
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