High stake test: Effects on curriculum

High stake test: Effects on curriculum
Teaching to the test

According to Raul Gracia, a graduate student from the EDCI 6304 Learning & Cognition course, after conjuring up the assessment, the government decided to put guidelines in place to force schools and districts to be liable for “No Child Left Behind.” Schools and districts are now themselves forcing educators to implement programs that will teach students to be successful on The TAKS Test instead of focusing on innovation and creativity in the classroom. “Teaching to the test” comes from teachers forced to show progress and results based on The TAKS Assessment.

Because of the “Teaching to the test” principle, rather than used as a tool to assess students’ learning, these high stake tests have instead become the actual curriculum which the teacher has to teach and prepare for every day. “One negative effect is that the curriculum for the content is not fully covered for the semester in order to prepare for TAKS testing.” Said Luz Guillen, a graduate student from the EDCI 6304 Learning & Cognition course.

Teachers in such high-stakes situation have responded by aligning curriculum to test preparation as well as spending more of their instructional time to ensure that their students are well prepared for the tests.—Dorothy, Feb 6, 2008, EDCI 6304

Unfortunately with high stakes testing, more time is spent on test taking skills and strategies than actual school curriculum, more commonly known as, teaching to the test.-- Erin, Feb 10 2008, EDCI 6304

First we need to take in consideration on the time in which we live in. I mean now we have the NCLB law. Students are not being taught the content they are only being taught strategies on how to pass this test. We as a country are letting our children down by implementing this law {NCLB}.—Tyra, Feb 4, 2008, EDCI 4322-01

Also, some of our students have observed that most observed teachers (including both elementary, middle school, and high school) were spending the majority of their class time helping students review the test materials, teaching test-taking strategies, or preparing for the test materials. Below are some examples from our students’ classroom observations:

Today I observed Mr. Marin’s 1st Period class. It was a good experience for since the class is for 9th Grade TAKS preparation. I have never observed a class that is solely for test preparation. The students who are in the class are those who did not score high enough on the math portion of the TAKS at the 8th Grade level. After becoming aware of this TAKS preparation class, I realized that this would be an ideal class to observe for my research project, since these students are those who are struggling (or at least have struggled in the past) in math, and the reasons for such could likely be because of the lack of motivation.—Classroom observation fieldnotes, Eldon Clark, February 13, 2008, EDCI 4322-60

I arrived at the school on Wednesday morning at 8:45am, since I had already scheduled an observation with Mrs. Reyes. At the time of my arrival, I noticed that the students were very quiet and seemed to be reading. The teacher then informed me that they were finishing up their daily reading TAKS passages.—Classroom observation fieldnotes, Kristy, Feb 6, 2008, EDCI 4322-01

Ms Aza told everybody where he or she should go and gave each student a copy of the editing assignment. She also told them that this was a review of the writing protocols of TAKS. —Classroom observation fieldnotes, Dorothy, Feb 11, 2008, EDCI 6304

I walked to Room 134 and Ms Aza gave me a copy of the day’s work. The students would be working on Editing – tested in TAKS writing and these grammatical errors were taken from students’ writing assignment that was done on Friday, February 8. —Classroom observation fieldnotes, Dorothy, Feb 11, 2008, EDCI 6304

Ms Aza told the class to take out their planners and for the benefit of those without a planner; she drew a chart on the whiteboard. She wanted the students to put in capital letters the word TEST for Tuesday. —Classroom observation fieldnotes, Dorothy, Feb 11, 2008, EDCI 6304

I arrived at the school on Wednesday morning at 8:45am, since I had already scheduled an observation with Mrs. Rey. At the time of my arrival, I noticed that the students were very quiet and seemed to be reading. The teacher then informed me that they were finishing up their daily reading TAKS passages…During this observation I was not able to gather too much information (on learning styles) because I was there during a time when they have to do their own work and the lesson is just a review.—Kristy, Feb 6, 2008, EDCI 4322-01

During this time, I looked around at the classroom arrangement... I particularly noticed one of the walls had some different posters with TAKS strategies on them. I thought that was a really great idea to have those strategies posted for all the students to recall as they are preparing for the TAKS, coming up in March. —Classroom observation fieldnotes, Kristy, Feb 6, 2008, EDCI 4322-01

To read more about High Stake Test:
High Stake Test, Low Quality Learning—Challenging ...
High stake test: Effects on curriculum
High stake test: Effects on teachers
High stake test: Effects on students
High stake test: Evaluation
High stake test: Suggestions/solutions

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