Sunday, November 30, 2008
Proposal Paper
For my proposal paper I am going to write about standardized testing. In the state of Virginia we have to take SOL's and I think that these tests are hindering the children's learning. Teachers get evaluated based on the scores their students receive on these types of tests. So now a days it feels like teachers are just teaching so their students do well on the standardized tests rather than teaching them valuable information that they will use later on in life. It is going to be really hard to find sources for me to site becuase this is a pretty recent issue. My mom is a teacher so I think I am going to do a personal interview with her and use that in my paper.
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3 comments:
I agree. My step-sisiter is a teacher and she complains about SOLs all the time. She teaches English at a school where many of the kids grew up speaking a different language. She finds it very frustratingthat these children are expected to be at the same level as other students who have been exposed to English their whole lives. It might be interesting if you talk about any advantages/disadvantages that different groups of stundents have when taking these tests.
I completely agree with how you feel about SOLs. I know while I was in school many of my teachers were so stressed out about all of their students passing the SOLs they never made lectures interesting or included any outside information. A few of my teachers even vocalized their frustrations with the VA's Standards of Learning program. Also, not all students were given the same, fair attention and it became distracting and obvious who was or was not on the borderline of failing the test.
I went to private school, but I know a lot of people who had to deal with SOLs. I just don't like the idea of standardized testing as a whole. I don't think it measures intelligence accurately because you don't know what's on the test until you take it. Plus, there is a time limit and that can be another factor that would allow someone to slip on doing well. I certainly freaked on time whenever we had PSATs and that was just a practice. I think the only way to really measure someone's competence is by their GPA, but then again that could be a whole other story on cheating..
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