“I believe that the testing of the student's achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.” Carl Rogers
This week we talked about standards-based assessments and their purposes, advantages, and disadvantages. I personally think that the local public schools are spending way too much time worrying about the SAT-10 results if they are not going to begin to hold the students more accountable for their scores. I have observed and have talked to many other teachers who have observed the students during the administration of this test. The overall consensus is that the students just really do not care about how well they perform and are not taking this test seriously. Most of the students are done way before the allotted time limit is up, they are bubbling answers in to make designs on the paper, or they are drawing on scratch paper that they should be using to help solve math problems. Currently the SAT-10 is not being used as an exit or graduation exam and I do not even know if the local colleges even take these tests scores into consideration when a student applies for admission. So basically only the students who are intrinsically motivated try to do their best on this test. We could at least try to assign some sort of course grade in relation to how well the students perform on the corresponding sections of the SAT-10 or give those students who perform well some sort of extra credit. If the students do not care, then it is not going to matter how much effort the administrators and teachers put into trying to figure out how to get the students to perform better on the SAT-10. If I had to take a test in which there were no personal consequences involved, I would probably not bother to try to perform as well as I would if there were personal consequences involved.
I agree, several students or most of the students here on Guam just do not care about the SAT10's and just bubble whatever answer they think is correct or just don't care what they are bubbling. I personally believe its because they are not told about what the SAT10 is for and how important it is. I remember when I was student teaching, the principal told the teachers to make sure that they take the time to explain to the students about the SAT10 and the reasons why they have to do their best. Sometimes it works and most of the time again the students just want to get it done.
ReplyDeleteI agree that often students do not have a stake in the test, so there is no push for them to apply their best effort. I'm not sure how I feel about requiring the test for graduation. If we are going to require a test for graduation then it should be a truly comprehensive exam similar to the baccalaureate exams in France. Those however are quite time-consuming and, I imagine, costly. I think part of the reason students do not put effort forth on standardized tests is because of the enormous hype surrounding them. Kids, particular teenaged kids, reject hype force upon them. Actually, I think that is true of anyone. If we could reduce the hype and let teachers and schools return their focus on actual teaching in the classroom, then proper learning could take place and, as a bonus, students would be able to perform well on standardized tests too.
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