Additionally, when asked how the use of student growth measures has affected their own instruction, the most common response is
increase of teaching to the test.
«As passionate as I am about [Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's] test fixation, and the need to focus more on teaching and learning
instead of teaching to the test, the stakes are, will children have a public education?»
In an era where high - stakes tests have increased concern over test anxiety and introduced debate over the
merits of teaching to the test, it may seem odd to promote a teaching method called «test - enhanced learning.»
This provides an indirect test of the
extent of teaching to the test, as gains due to crude test - prep strategies are less likely to persist over time than gains produced by improved instruction.
It's how far we still must go to unleash innovation and creativity in our classrooms, to break a
culture of teaching to the test, and to equip our students for success in an economy fueled by inquiry and imagination.
The rationalization for the waivers is to alleviate the pressure on
teachers of teaching to the test and to help schools avoid penalization for not reaching 100 % proficiency by 2014 (Department of Education, 2007).
Long days, growing challenges Fighting the
stress of teaching to the test NEA Survey: Nearly Half Of Teachers Consider Leaving Profession Due to Standardized Testing This video focuses on the impact of growing teacher workload in Milwaukee Public Schools and the role Milwaukee Teachers»...
NCLB has led to a narrowing of curriculum, demoralization of teachers, explosion of cheating scandals,
reduction of teaching to test - preparation, weakening of public education, and deprivation of the disadvantaged children of a meaningful education experience.
However, in the past two years, the nature of teaching these topics has changed as a direct result of America's willingness to embrace or at least tolerate the
cult of teaching to the test.
If standardized test scores form an integral part of a evaluation system, as many states and systems are now requiring, students will have to take the same number of tests, and will likely experience the same
amount of teaching to the test, regardless of whether test scores play a large or small role in the overall evaluation.
While David Blazar, assistant professor of education policy and economics at the University of Maryland, and Cynthia Pollard, a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, agree with Hansen that
worries of teaching to the test may be overstated, they dispute the argument that better tests elevate test preparation to ambitious teaching.
Relying on teachers» assessments for the information currently provided by standardized test scores would save instructional time, better capture the true abilities of diverse students, and reduce the
problem of teaching to the test.