Standardized

Testing
Courtney Henry, Hawa Kamara,
Matthew Melnychuk, Kennedy
Werre

Intro
- Standardize tests are used to measure students knowledge, abilities,
understanding, or skills acquired from their academic work
- These tests give students from the same grade the exact same test
questions all across the province.
- In Alberta students are tested in grades 3, 6, 9 and 12. These kinds of
tests are called: SLA (Student Learning Assessment), PAT (Provincial
Achievement Tests), and Diplomas (DIPs).
-

on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOLwDBcgSjs

SLAs
-

The SLA exams are a new type of assessment that began to be implemented in Gr.3
classrooms this last fall.

They are digitally based check in exams that are taken at the beginning of the year to see the
students strengths and areas of growth they need to work on

The SLAs have three main purposes

To improve student learning (primary purpose).

To enhance instruction for students.

To assure Albertans our education system is meeting the needs of students and achieves the
outcomes of the Ministerial Order on Student Learning.

Quote
Albert Einstein said that Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its
ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

Understanding Standardized
testing
Standardized - meant the test is the same in three ways
Instruction, question/format, and time allotment

Multiple Choice - easy to administer and score in large numbers

All students have:
the same chance to answer each question correctly
the same instruction and delivered in the same way
the same time allotment is given to finish the exam

Some Exceptions
more time allowed
allowed to write in a different room
given readers to read the questions

Pros
Comparison of educational systems across schools, provinces, and/or
countries.
Opportunity for schools to assess strengths and weaknesses of system
Provide accountability and give a way to evaluate a curricula.
Help regulate which schools/districts/regions are meeting goals.

Cons
Teaching to the test
Don't allow for linguistic or other cultural
components among students
Lead to student disengagement
Doesnt fit the needs of twenty-first century
learner
Methods such as problem based learning is
playing an important role in curricula and are
yet to be assessed on standardized tests.

Test Anxiety
Test anxiety is caused by the following. Fear of failure which means has issues on not performing
the outcome of the test. Lack of preparation which means students waits until last minutes to study
and that can be overwhelming and lead to lack of preparation for test. And lastly the poor test
history, because if you fail exams that can lead to negative mindset of the performance on the
future tests.
Also:

Effects on Students
Standardized testing scores forces student to try and achieve the governments goals for themselves
rather than their own internal goals. In many cases these aims are too high and this causes the
student an excessive amount of stress. This can lead to the students having
headaches
disturbed sleep patterns
trouble concentrating
Also.

Effects on Teachers
Teachers have the most stressful job of all which entails making sure that their students achieve high test
results.
There is an immense amount of pressure put on educators to attain exceptional test scores. This
pressure often:
Undermines teaching as a profession.
Increases feelings of guilt, anger, and low professional self-esteem.
Teachers will start to devote a significant amount of time teaching to the test.
Forget important tools that they were taught in school in regards to educating a successful
classroom. Tools such as multiple intelligences, different learning styles, inquiry-based
learning.
Teachers jobs are at risk if they dont obtain high test scores from their students.

Expert Opinions
Trisha Sotropa: St. Marys School
One word description was awful.
She stated that It is very stressful to get through all the content and still get deep into the curriculum.
Its a single snapshot of a student's day, and like anyone, people have bad days and sometimes those days
are test days.
Robert Grisonich: Notre Dame Academy
He stated that it puts an immense amount of unnecessary pressure on students and teachers.
Believes that teachers essentially start to become worried and second think their capabilities as a teacher.
He also states that the tests do not take into consideration what happens at home before the test that may
have caused them to become unfocused for the exam.

Our Opinion
Students write standardize tests not to express their understanding of the world or to even form
their own opinions, instead they are told to practice and memorize what is believed to be
important . We believe that a three hour exam should not indicate student knowledge,
understanding and ability to learn. These tests do not take into consideration that students all learn
and demonstrate their understanding differently, and this is a huge problem. Standardized testing
creates unnecessary stress in many areas of the educational system; teachers, students,
administrators, and so on. Teachers arent teaching properly anymore as they are incredibly
stressed to teach to the test, that they forget concepts of educating that they learned in school to
obtain a successful and engaging classroom. It is time that the education systems get rid of
standardized testing and begin to trust the teachers evaluations as they obtained the education to
be able to do this properly. Standardized testing does not test for the right reasons; it has become
an evaluation tool for schools to compete against one another to be the best school district.

Questions??