In the past few weeks, nothing has hit me quite like this quote. As a teacher, it is my job to observe my students in order to teach them in a way that they understand!  It is important to make those connections with these children, but also to understand them on a level that goes past just being their teacher.  This is a critical time in their lives.  They are growing physically and mentally.  Shouldn't we understand that?

Testing for intelligence?

Testing has always been a sore subject for me.  Personally, I do not like the idea of testing, due to the fact that I suffer from test anxiety.  I am a hands-on-person.  I like being able to show the skill that I learned without having to choose a particular answer.  When it comes to testing I DO NOT LIKE multiple-choice/standardized testing.  When I was younger I would begin looking at these answers, and if the answer that I came up with did not match any of those, I would automatically begin to panic.  Why is my answer not there?  What did I do wrong?  What do I do?

"Today, standardized tests continue to level the social playing field. Standardized testing provides a consistent measure for academic success, offer high-achieving students a way to prove themselves that is unbound by their social circumstances, and create an objective appraisal by which all schools can be compared." (Dickinson, 2019).  I definitely understand the objective here, we are trying to show what our students have learned using measurable data, but what we do not see is how they may not be testing as well as they do when we informally assess them in the classroom.  "Despite these potential benefits, many experts argue that education systems over rely on standardized testing for assessment. Such reliance can lead teachers to "teach to the test" and provide unfair advantages to communities that can afford better test prep." (Dickinson, 2019).  How is this fair to our students?  Then this makes me think, "Am I teaching to help my kids, or in order to impress administration?  Am I actually showing what my students learned?" 

Other countries don't use standardized testing in the way that we do.  "Finland's education system relies sparingly on standardizes tests, while the United States leans heavily on them."(Dickinson, 2019).  So what does Finland do instead of the standard standardized test?  "Finland's education system has one major standardized test, the national matriculation examination. This test is taken by students at the end of their general upper secondary education and consists of four exams. Students must take a mother tongue language exam. They then select from the following subjects for their next three exams: mathematics, a foreign language, the second national language, and a general studies subject such as humanities or science."  (Dickinson, 2019).  I love the fact that students have a choice in what they want to test on.  I have noticed that some of my students test better in mathematics than reading because that is their stronger subject.  I would like to see something like this implemented in our school systems. 

References:

https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/standardized-testing?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1