Motivating or Overwhelming: Standardized Testing
Teaching two subjects that are heavily tested or better known as, the most looked upon scores in Nebraska to see how good of a educator you are, can feel like a lot of pressure. Especially for a 1st year teacher coming straight out of college, where they preach to try avoid ‘teaching to the test.’ In the last 10 plus years the education system, the government and even the parents have turned to looking at a number or a word to see who is doing well and who is struggling in school. The words proficient and below standards decipher what classes some students can take in their future years of high school. It also decides the schools that get funding and receive certain educational items based off of these words and scores.
I understand the reason and the need for standardized testing, don’t get me wrong. We need to get all children on an equal learning level to help all children get the same opportunities in life as their classmates/friends/family members/etc. It has all the good intentions that schools and communities want for their students and children, because now all teachers have a very ‘similar’ curriculum that someone in Scottsbluff has would be ideally same content as someone teaching up in Norfolk.
Although all 50 states have some sort of standardized testing, I just want to talk about the NeSA testing that all Nebraska Elementary, Middle and High schools are all required to take at some point throughout their school year. These tests began to be scrutinized more and more during the Bush presidency when ‘No Child Left Behind’ was instituted into American Educational facilities across the country. I remember when I was in 6th grade, we were fed more tests than usual, at least compared to 5th grade and 4th grade. These tests were not circle your answer or explain your solution type problems, no these tests were fill in the bubble with a No.2 pencil and complete the same process for 3 straight days on 50 questions in a row. Being a 23 year old teacher, I can still remember these tests all the way back to my middle school days.
Think back to when you were in school or better yet, if you have kids, think about why they were excited to go to school. I am willing to pay off anyones student debt that no student, no matter the grade level, did not go to school to be tested 2–4 times a year. In fact, I truly believe that the amount of testing students do today in school (NeSA, MAPS, DIBELS, Regional Testing) that we are harming the motivation for our students to do well.
Compare this testing chaos to an athlete who becomes unmotivated or unwilling to play a sport anymore. If an athlete has been playing the game of golf his or her whole life, starting out because she wanted to do so and the longer he/she plays the sport the more forced she is to compete, practice and repeat the game. Sooner or later, his/her motivation to do well on every hole and every round is going to drop down and the excellence that he/she showed early in the career is going to collapse drastically. Why? Because this person has lost interest and motivation to do well because they are now forced to complete this task multiple times every year, or week in this scenario.
In a 2015 Gallup poll, only 50% of students were surveyed to say that they were engaged in school fully. Half, 50%, of all students. Shouldn’t that number be higher, especially with these tests that they need to focus and do well on. Isn’t all the items on the tests the curriculum and content that the teachers should be providing to the students in an everyday classroom? So how do we get students back to being motivated and engaged in class all day instead of being timid or becoming overwhelmed or even unmotivated to learn and do their best?
The government, the education system, we all need to simplify this testing down to one simple system. Rather than using 4 different types of tests that essentially tell us the same thing and killing our students’ willingness to do well. As I stated before, I am not against the testing of students because I understand its positive purpose and what it ultimately wants to accomplish because it has the best of intentions for students in all different types of communities and schools. If we could just get the system to be simplified into one test per semester, I think that students would be more motivated and teachers would be able to engage students to do their best as the year goes along, rather than fight their will to learn and be tested anymore.
