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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 31 page study into the issue of student performance on standardized achievement tests. The call for increased accountability on the part of public schools intensified throughout the decade of the 1990s when educators, parents, legislators and the general public realized that increased spending on schools had not resulted in increased educational results. The result of today's regulatory requirements is that achievement test results directly affect teacher and principal employment, school choice and federal funding options, but students may not be fully motivated to do their best on "low-stake" tests for which they are not expecting a grade or other direct benefit. The study examines student motivation among 8th graders. Bibliography lists 26 sources.
Page Count:
31 pages (~225 words per page)
File: CC6_KSeduStudAchTest.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
Development In years past, everyone "knew" that standardized achievement testing more often than not did not reflect students true grasp of content areas
of various subjects. Students have little reason to put forth a great deal of effort in the educational culture in which grades are the rewards of performing well.
As these tests are never graded in the sense that classroom assessment tools are, students have no direct impetus for striving to do their best work on them. A
North Carolina company that administers and scores achievement testing for several states public school systems, Measurement Inc., can produce story after story of score sheets - those separate sheets on
which students record their choices in pencil for machine reading and automatic scoring - whose "bubbled in" answers are arranged on the sheet to form a picture or repeating pattern,
rather than reflecting any attempt to answer test questions to the best of the students ability. This has always been the case with
standardized testing, but the implications of poor reported performance are much greater now than in the past. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires that schools continually improve their
overall test scores; enforcement for the requirement comes in the form of threat of loss of federal funds or permission for families within specific school districts to move their children
to other districts or schools that can demonstrate greater achievement. Both teachers and administrators are held accountable for test scores; their very livelihoods depend on students putting forth the
greatest effort possible and truly striving to do well on the achievement tests that now are required by law. While students do not
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