by Vicki Phipps

Created on: April 02, 2008

When students score high on standardized test, it's the school districts way to say, "Our teachers are the best." It's a way to evaluate teacher's performance more than it is to test the kids, but no one thinks of testing as fun. It's a stressful experience for everyone.

Teachers are placed under tremendous pressure of making sure that students measure up by the school administration, the parents, the community and the stare, but when a teacher is stressed, she can't do her best. She feels responsible for her student's scores and even more, so how do we alleviate the stress when it comes to tests?

It's been my experience that in elementary school, the teacher's stressful mood rubs off on the student's too, so if testing seems to be nerve wracking, maybe we need to re-evaluate why that is true and make some new testing rules.

1. Let's learn to think of testing differently and make it fun for everyone.

If we in our society could find a way to evaluate without making a score on a test determine who is the best, it could be that a standardized test won't be seen as the ultimate test of each student's and teacher's worth and value in our schools.

When kids are tested throughout the school year, they learn early on that the score determines if he or she will pass the class, so why wouldn't they be anxious when it comes to the most dreaded day of the year when the standardized test is faced with dread and fear?

If a child fails any test, it's more of a measure of the teacher's ability to teach than it is a measure of the student's ability to learn. In the best case scenario, all students would make straight A's. There is no child who simply, "chooses," to make a bad grade. It could be the teaching style that has failed, instead of the child who doesn't learn well because of that style.

One way to alleviate this issue is to reduce our classrooms to student-teacher ratio's which are more reasonable than thirty learners to one instructor. Are we placing our students in classrooms where the teaching style is comparable to the individual student's learning style? Are we asking teachers to do the impossible? Are we limiting our students learning by teaching through out the year, only those things that will be on the standardized test? What about the rest? The truth is that it's all about money. It would cost too much to provide these things for more effective testing.

If we, the parents, teachers, community and state can find better ways to evaluate our own performance, maybe we'd

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>