Quotations and Literature Forum

Hi everyone! I new to this site, and I was wondering if I could get some help from someone who knows more than me about a particular subject. I am a high school senior, and I have to write a scholarship essay about standardized tests. I am going to college to be an English teacher, and the essay asks me to give my opinion about the role of standardized tests, and what other methods could be used to evaluate student academic performance. Aside from taking them my whole academic career, I don't feel that I really have an opinion about the tests. I just wanted to see if any of you might have some thoughts that I could start with. Thanks.

Sarah

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Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Check here:

http://www.fairtest.org/facts/whatwron.htm

http://www.engines4ed.org/hyperbook/nod ... 69-pg.html

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~rouse/rhe30 ... site2.html

Thank you very much Phaedrus...those sites were very helpful.

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Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Standardized test have become a measuring stick by which the institution of education guages regimented progress.

During the third grade I had to take the Weekly Reader reading test. My score was so high that my teacher was astonished. The test also indicated that my imagination was off the charts. That was one of the last standardized test that I did well on. In high shcool I scored above average on abstract reasoning. All my other scores were average or below average. My class standing at graduation was 59 of 89. When I took the ACT my composite score was 9. I scored a 3 on math. It took me 5 years to graduate from college.

phantom-
i think that is exactly what i am going to prove in my esssay- that a child's (or anyone's) intelligence cannot be determined from a bunch of superficial questions that do not in any way allow the person to think. Part of being intelligent is finding different, valid, ways of answering questions, and if you limit the person to one, correct, multiple choice answer, then you aren't finding out what they really know...thanks for all your help!

Sarah

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Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

You might also consider emotional intelligence.

http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/galler ... motion.htm

People seem to all make the mistake of thinking that standardized tests, or grades for that matter, measure your intelligence. This is obviously not true, given that majority of standardized tests and grades are made up of questions on scholastic facts from some fashion of textbook. Therefore, standardized tests do not in the least bit measure your intelligence, but simply your memory.

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'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
-Abraham Lincoln

The fact that the new SAT's are including a written essay may be a step in the right direction--though I think it would be difficult to evaluate each person individually without some easy-to-score tool.

I hate standardized tests for this simple reason:
Growing up my brother was a little bit of a problem child. He screwed over his entire freshmen year and half of his sophomore year to the point where they were wiped from his record because he had no GPA. Amazingly, he graduated on time with his class with a GPA just under 3.5. If you looked at his standardized test scores, you would have though him to be a complete fool. He fails almost all of them,, buecause he just can't test well. About two years ago he was in an accident where he had some brain trauma. When they were preparing to release him from the hospital, the doctor ran some tests to see how his brain was functioning. The doctor asked him a question and my brother asked him "which answer do you want. There are two answers to this question" The doctor thought my brother was nuts because he thought there was only one answer. My brother, who has failed almost every standardized test he ever took and never attended a single college class in his life, took the sheet with the problem on it and walked the doctor, who had years of college and probably scored off the charts on his tests, through the second answer to the problem, that no one had ever found. Standardized tests don't prove anything.

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We hold these truths to be selve evident, but evidence is not ownership. Those words are not a decree that we have life, liberty, happiness. Only an iron clad statement that it is ours if we are willing to do all that is necessary to take it.

YinYangSearcher, I am so sorry about your brother and I agree that standardized tests will not find the genius in many people. I wonder what Einstein would do today.

I have always been satisfied with my own level and wasn't expected to perform so my scores were good enough to get where I was going

We are a bottom-line society and look at scores and quantifiable measures. International baccalaureate programs seem to test better for overall knowledge gained and are hand written from what I've learned.

You can't test for intelligence. End of story.

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'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
-Abraham Lincoln

I believe Sarah was seeking information about academic performance not intelligence tests like IQ, though I agree.

don;t you think this forum is a little old?

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All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Sir Winston Churchill
British politician (1874 - 1965)