Brady- Activity 1.1

NCLB’s Standardized Testing Squashes Creativity in the Classroom

No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 requires 100% of all students to reach the proficient level by 2014. NCLB is not a systems approach to fixing a systems problem. It lacks a focus on national standards, takes creativity from learning and teaching, and has many flaws. After reading this week’s readings and watching the videos, I feel the biggest flaw with NCLB, IDEA, and other educational mandates is the strong focus on standardized testing.

Standardized testing does not give educators the answers they need. Sure, it pinpoints which areas students are struggling in; however, results come back late, which defeat the purpose. Thus, it does not allow teachers to meet the individual needs of that specific year’s class.

Testing also causes teachers to focus on certain band levels within the testing group. Efforts are focused primarily on those falling below grade level or low end of the assessment ladder, rather than the whole group. It is not an attempt distributed equally in helping all students’ progress, learn, and grow. Teachers are pouring all their energy into a few students to get them up to grade level, rather than challenging the middle to upper testing population. This simply is not fair to other students. Every child deserves individualized attention from their teacher regardless of their academic level in the classroom.

Additionally, these assessments are not pushing students to reach their full potential. Failing schools drown in standardized testing. Students are bubbling in answers and taught there is only one right answer whereas affluent schools allow students to ask the questions.  We need to challenge our students so they can be successful in the world and ask these questions. Unfortunately, due to these assessments, students are achieving bare minimum because teachers are telling them do this, do this, and do this. They are instructing children and telling them you don’t need to know this for the test so don’t waste your time studying it. They are not allowing them to think for themselves.

Likewise, students have the engrained concept that barely passing tests is okay and not to challenge themselves further. This is unacceptable and needs to be changed. We need to give kids time to learn, develop, be problem-solvers, empathetic, caring, and successful in the world. We need them to think analytically, and work outside of bubbles. We are not doing that with the mandated standardized testing created by NCLB.

The two videos I watched entitled, testing: No Child Left Behind (Segment Four from Full Episode) and Voices on Education, gave me further insight of the negatives of standardized tests. The first video noted, “State spending on standardized testing has almost tripled in the last six years to over a billion dollars.” In 2002, President Bush signed the 2001 NCLB law, which raised the stakes for standardized testing. This testing has affected schools greatly. Now every school has to test yearly and report the results. The results of these testing affects the school’s reputation. School can be closed, restructured, teachers fired, administration changed, etc. from the testing results. This simply is not right to decide the fate of a school because of one type of assessment.

             

                 Another issue with standardized testing mentioned in the films are students are only taking one kind of test. They should be taking different kinds of tests and learning from different subjects. Since NCLB was passed, schools have cut back on subjects outside of NCLB mandates. This single mindedness leads to creativity being squashed in the classroom, specifically with teachers. They teach according to the tests.

                 

                 Flawed testing results according to the individual state is an additional weakness in NCLB policy. Each state gets to pick which test they use to assess students. This causes huge discrepancies in testing results according to the video I viewed. For example, “Mississippi students tested 89% of fourth grades can read at grade level or proficient in reading; whereas, Massachusetts with much tougher standards, had 50% students testing proficient.” Massachusetts, in my opinion, is probably at the same level reading-wise, if not higher; however, due to different state testing, results are inaccurate and false. Mississippi is portrayed a higher reading state. In NCLB, there is no national standard and needs to be, so inaccuracies like these can be cleared up.

In the video, Voices on Education, Diane Ravitch, an education historian, stressed NCLB drills students versus teaching the 21- century skills needed. It is single focused on just math, reading, and science. According to Ravitch, “We are treating students to a poor diet of testing, how to test, more testing, limited subjects, etc.” We are taking away critical thinking, problem solving, and background knowledge enriching material. We need to get away from this.

In conclusion, in order to strengthen our educational system, we need to redesign NCLB and limited educational mandates, more specifically getting away from standardized testing, We must rather emphasize creativity, self-questioning, critical thinking, and problem solving across all curricular and learning levels.