The Academic Performance of the Student: the Revising the Pattern of the Tests - Research Paper Example

Outline: Thesis: Standardized testing, although providing an easy means of assessing academic performance, are not always reliable for this purpose, and might prove to be harmful to the student if used inappropriately. Therefore, they should be changed and redesigned. I. Nature of the test is controversial and debatable. A. Memory based. Require recalling. B. Not diverse to cater to all mindsets. II. Curriculum issues. A. Restrict the curriculum. B. Do not cover the entire curriculum. III. Misuse. A. When parents decide the future of the child based on the test scores. B. When teachers determine their behavior and approach towards the child based on the scores. Conclusion: Although the standardized tests are uniform and easy in assessing the academic performance of the student, they have a lot of drawbacks which need to be addressed by redesigning the revising the pattern of the tests. Harris Kamran English Position Paper 8 October 2011 Standardized testing The standardized testing is a popular and widely practiced method of assessment and review of the students’ academic performance, especially up to the level of high school (Elford, 2002). Whereas they may serve as an easy tool for the purpose, it is believed that they fail at this very purpose of fair and appropriate assessment of the student (Elford, 2002), and often reflect unfairly and badly on the child’s performance which might harm the child in terms of his academic future (Brown et al., 2000). For this reason, there is a need to redesign the tests to make them more student friendly and appropriate as assessment tools (Elford, 2002). This paper purports to highlight some of the issues associated with standardized testing, in order to analyze their worth and appropriateness as a means of reviewing academic performance. To start with, the very nature of the tests is controversial and debatable. Scholars now believe that these tests depend heavily on memorizing the data in the curriculum (Brown et al., 2000), and therefore are based on the recalling of information (Brown et al., 2000) rather than application and conceptual learning. The students are subjected to undue and unnecessary pressure (Brown et al., 2000) due to this nature of the tests, in that they have to cram the information instead of developing knowledge and the practice of that knowledge (Brown et al., 2000). Whereas some of the information is imperatively required to be memorized, the very design of the tests should not be as such. This system of testing, hence, means that the tests are not diverse in nature (Brown et al., 2000). They do not cater to or even take into account the different mindsets of the students (Brown et al., 2000). Every student is not good at memorizing and cramming, and therefore, many students are left at a disadvantage due to the nature of the tests (Brown et al., 2000). Another problem can be the area of emphasis of the tests. For instance, many university admission tests require the students to be good at mathematics (Elford, 2002), which is unfair and disadvantageous for those students who do not have a mathematical mind and who are opting for the arts or social sciences (Elford, 2002). Not addressing such issues means that the tests have a restricted scope (Elford, 2002). Another issue with the tests is their approach to the curriculum. Due to the nature of the tests, they restrict the curriculum (Brown et al., 2000) to just the kind that can be memorized and recalled on the test day, so that the school boards and the teachers do not have the flexibility to include material in the curriculum that can be analyzed, practiced, or otherwise is beyond the nature of the standardized tests (Brown et al., 2000). This means the students are not fully equipped with the knowledge that they should be exposed to at their academic levels, and therefore, they are at a loss when compared to systems that do not rely so heavily on standardized testing (Elford, 2002). A restricted curriculum means a restricted education and a restricted approach to the academia, which hampers the understanding and knowledge-seeking abilities of the students (Elford, 2002). These tests also fail to cover the entire curriculum (Brown et al., 2000), so that a lot of information is left non-assessed and non-reviewed (Brown et al., 2000). Only selected portions of the curriculum are tested, those that can match the design and set up of the tests (Brown et al., 2000). This provides with an unfair test score and assessment, and the assessment results are not appropriate and misfit to base decisions and judgments upon (Brown et al., 2000). Such test scores can be very damaging to the self esteem, impression, and academic future of the student if it is used inappropriately by the parents and the teachers (Brown et al., 2000). Parents often base the decisions for their children on the test scores provided by the schools and the testing boards (Brown et al., 2000). The flawed nature of the tests means that the scores are not fully reflective of a child’s performance (Brown et al., 2000), and if such scores are used by parents to base their child’s future education upon, chances are that the results of such a decision could be very unfair and damaging to the child (Brown et al., 2000). The teachers, too, often base their attitude and their impressions of the students upon the test scores (Brown et al., 2000). The amount of time they give to each student, the expectations that they keep from students (Brown et al., 2000), and the treatment to which they expose a student plays a vital role in the mental and educational development of a student (Brown et al., 2000). If the child is exposed to negative treatment by the teacher based on flawed test scores (Brown et al., 2000), it is a very unfair consequence of the standardized testing for that student (Elford, 2002). From the preceding discussion, it is evident that although the standardized testing provides for a convenient method of testing (Elford, 2002), it is flawed in nature, and there is a need for revising and redesigning the system of testing (Elford, 2002) so that it addresses the important issues raised in this paper. References Elford, G. W. (2002). Beyond standardized testing: Better information for school accountability and management. U.S.: Scarecrow Press. Hogan, T. P. (2005). Educational assessment: A practical introduction. Michigan: John Wiley. Southern Early Childhood Association. (2000). Assessing development and learning in young children (9th ed.). Arkansas: Brown, M. H., Graves, S., Arnold, F. D., Correro, G., Jambor, T., Kamii, C., & Neill, M. Read More