Why Test Students?

Why Test Students?

There have always been tests, but there have never before been so many! It’s natural for parents and concerned citizens to wonder what is motivating this increase and to examine the many reasons why.

Why test students?

Well, to start with because we need to know how children are doing in school. Ever since there have been schools, teachers have used tests of various kinds to find out how well students are learning and if their

instruction has been successful or not. But the reasons for testing don’t stop there. In recent years, large-scale testing has taken on a more significant social role. Many policymakers claim that American education isn’t doing the job it needs to do. They cite studies showing that by 12th grade, students in the U.S. perform below most other industrialized nations on international assessments. Our 12th grade students fail to make substantial gains in reading or mathematics on the National Assessment of Educational

Progress, “America’s report card.” Numerous educational reforms of the 1990s, they say, have failed to

deliver on their promise to improve student achievement. In this context, policymakers have passed federal and state legislation using tests to measure school performance and spur improved achievement. Tests are used to rank schools, place students at various levels, and decide who will graduate from high school. In schools where test scores fail to improve substantially, parents may transfer their child to a higher performing school. In some cases, federal law allows students to use their share of Title 1 funding for tutoring services. Such uses of test scores go far beyond finding out how well a child can read, write, or solve word problems.

According to testing experts and researchers, testing serves many important purposes.

Tests are used to:

•       Diagnose individual student strengths and weaknesses.

•       Focus learning and instruction to state standards and key concepts.

•       Motivate improved student, school, district, and state performance.

•       Make school and college entrance decisions.

•       Report how well schools are performing and improving to the public.

•       Help determine whether or not schools should be accredited.

•       Evaluate school program quality and recommend improvements.

•        

Education researcher Robert Linn points out that tests are on the increase not only because they serve

so many purposes, but also because they are less expensive than many other school reforms—such as

professional development (teacher education programs). He notes that tests can be put into place

relatively quickly, can pressure teachers to make instructional changes in hopes of improving test

performance, and tend to attract media and public attention.

So the shorthand answer to “Why test students?” is because tests serve an expanding number of

significant educational purposes, bolstered by some financial and political considerations.

Classroom Tests

State tests have garnered the headlines, while far less attention has been paid to classroom tests—the

most frequent tests taken by students. Like state tests, classroom tests can have major consequences,

especially in the upper grades when test performance contributes significantly to a student’s grade point

average, a key factor in many college and university admission decisions. While classroom tests are

generally useful for evaluating student skills and learning, they sometimes fail to reflect state content

standards or may assess only low-level content. In more negative cases, classroom tests can fail to

provide effective feedback to students and can contain scoring errors.

In general, teachers use classroom tests to:

•        Diagnose student strengths and weaknesses.

•        Monitor each student’s progress.

•        Assign grades.

•        Determine the teacher’s own instructional effectiveness.

•        Provide information to inform instructional and curricular decisions.

•        Help teachers clarify their instructional intentions.

When combined with results from school assignments, state tests, and teacher observations, classroom

tests can provide a dependable picture of a student’s strengths and weaknesses. They can also inform

the teacher or parent if the child is improving or falling behind.

Determining a teacher’s or lesson’s instructional effectiveness can be another very useful facet of a

classroom test. If the entire class performs below a teacher’s expectations on a test, the teacher can use

those results to change their instruction. He or she might try a different instructional approach, spend

more time teaching missed concepts, or use different instructional materials.

Classroom tests also help teachers clarify their own instructional intentions. Developing tests prior to

instruction encourages teachers to develop a clear roadmap for learning, which includes standards,

instruction, and assessment. Both classroom tests and state tests serve many important purposes

helping to answer the question, “Why Test Students?”

What You Can Do

•       Stay informed about testing. Read newspapers, magazine articles and school newsletters to see how

•       test results are used by your district and state.

•       Discuss test scores and school rankings with your school principal or district assessment administrator.

•       If your district administers their own local tests, ask how they are developed, scored, and used.

•       Carefully review your child’s classroom tests. Look not only at your child’s performance, but the quality

•       of the test. Is it challenging? Was the content covered well in class and supported by homework,

•       assignments, and textbooks so your child had an opportunity to learn the material?

Brief Overview of the 10 Essay Writing Steps

Brief Overview of the 10 Essay Writing Steps

Below are brief summaries of each of the ten steps to writing an essay. Select the links for more info on any particular step, or use the blue navigation bar on the left to proceed through the writing steps. How To Write an Essay can be viewed sequentially, as if going through ten sequential steps in an essay writing process, or can be explored by individual topic.

1. Research: Begin the essay writing process by researching your topic, making yourself an expert. Utilize the internet, the academic databases, and the library. Take notes and immerse yourself in the words of great thinkers.
2. Analysis: Now that you have a good knowledge base, start analyzing the arguments of the essays you're reading. Clearly define the claims, write out the reasons, the evidence. Look for weaknesses of logic, and also strengths. Learning how to write an essay begins by learning how to analyze essays written by others.
3. Brainstorming: Your essay will require insight of your own, genuine essay-writing brilliance. Ask yourself a dozen questions and answer them. Meditate with a pen in your hand. Take walks and think and think until you come up with original insights to write about.
4. Thesis: Pick your best idea and pin it down in a clear assertion that you can write your entire essay around. Your thesis is your main point, summed up in a concise sentence that lets the reader know where you're going, and why. It's practically impossible to write a good essay without a clear thesis.
5. Outline: Sketch out your essay before straightway writing it out. Use one-line sentences to describe paragraphs, and bullet points to describe what each paragraph will contain. Play with the essay's order. Map out the structure of your argument, and make sure each paragraph is unified.
6. Introduction: Now sit down and write the essay. The introduction should grab the reader's attention, set up the issue, and lead in to your thesis. Your intro is merely a buildup of the issue, a stage of bringing your reader into the essay's argument.
(Note: The title and first paragraph are probably the most important elements in your essay. This is an essay-writing point that doesn't always sink in within the context of the classroom. In the first paragraph you either hook the reader's interest or lose it. Of course your teacher, who's getting paid to teach you how to write an essay, will read the essay you've written regardless, but in the real world, readers make up their minds about whether or not to read your essay by glancing at the title alone.)
7. Paragraphs: Each individual paragraph should be focused on a single idea that supports your thesis. Begin paragraphs with topic sentences, support assertions with evidence, and expound your ideas in the clearest, most sensible way you can. Speak to your reader as if he or she were sitting in front of you. In other words, instead of writing the essay, try talking the essay.
8. Conclusion: Gracefully exit your essay by making a quick wrap-up sentence, and then end on some memorable thought, perhaps a quotation, or an interesting twist of logic, or some call to action. Is there something you want the reader to walk away and do? Let him or her know exactly what.
9. MLA Style: Format your essay according to the correct guidelines for citation. All borrowed ideas and quotations should be correctly cited in the body of your text, followed up with a Works Cited (references) page listing the details of your sources.
10. Language: You're not done writing your essay until you've polished your language by correcting the grammar, making sentences flow, incoporating rhythm, emphasis, adjusting the formality, giving it a level-headed tone, and making other intuitive edits. Proofread until it reads just how you want it to sound. Writing an essay can be tedious, but you don't want to bungle the hours of conceptual work you've put into writing your essay by leaving a few slippy misppallings and pourly wordedd phrazies..
You're done. Great job. Now move over Ernest Hemingway — a new writer is coming of age! (Of course Hemingway was a fiction writer, not an essay writer, but he probably knew how to write an essay just as well.)

Paragraph Structure Basics

Paragraph Structure Basics

Four types of sentences make up a paragraph:

1. Topic Sentence: the topic sentence states one main idea. Everything in your paragraph must be subordinate to the topic sentence .
2. Supporting Sentence: a supporting sentence supports the assertion made in the topic sentence. Supporting sentences include concrete details, commentaries, facts, examples, opinions, interpretations, and analyses. Include as many supporting sentences as necessary, but not more than you need.
3. Limiting Sentence: a limiting sentence limits the scope of the topic sentence. you can only have one per paragraph.
4. Transitional Sentence: the transitional sentence provides a link to the next paragraph.

Types of Paragraphs

Three main categories of paragraphs exist:

1. Direct Paragraph: a topic sentence followed by a limiting sentence (optional), supporting sentences, and a transitional sentence is the most common type of paragraph in an essay, article, or research paper.
2. Pivotal Paragraph: the first sentence of a pivotal paragraph is a limiting sentence, followed by a supporting sentence and a pivotal sentence--one which turns the paragraph in a new direction. Although, but, yet, however, nevertheless, etc. are found in pivotal sentences. The pivotal sentence is followed by supporting sentences and a transisitional sentence.
3. Suspended Paragraph: in a suspended sentence, the topic sentence goes last. limiting and/or supporting sentences lead up to the topic sentence. Introductions/thesis paragraphs and conclusions are usually suspended paragraphs.

Note: a special thanks to Schaum's Guide to Writing Essays for helping me learn academic writing.

Paragraph Structure Lesson Plan

Read any piece of non-fiction. For each paragraph, do the following (I've used the second paragraph from the article below as a guide. You may use it too):

1) identify the topic sentence (After moving from Fort Wayne to Detroit in 1957, the Pistons struggled for over two decades.).

2) identify the limiting sentence, if it exists (It wasn't until the mid 1980s when Detroit head coach Chuck Daly instituted a more "aggressive" style of play that Detroit became a premier NBA team.) .

3) identify all supporting sentences and categorize them as a facts, examples, statistics, opinions, analyses, interpretations, etc. (Their fans affectionately called them "The Bad Boys." (fact)).

4) identify the transitional sentence (In this case the pivotal sentence and transitional sentence are the same.).

5) identify the pivotal sentence, if it exists (Basketball aficionados, however, called them bullies and blamed "The Bad Boys" for the league's downward spiral, a spiral thath saw the league fall from its pinnacle of excitement in the 1980s to its nadir of unwatchability in following years.).

In 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons won the lowest scoring game in NBA history, 19-18, over the Minneapolis Lakers. As boring as that 19-18 snooze-fest must have been, it just may have set a template for the methodical thuggery that has become a trademark of one of the NBA's most successful franchises.
After moving from Fort Wayne to Detroit in 1957, the Pistons struggled for over two decades. It wasn't until the mid 1980s when Detroit head coach Chuck Daly instituted a more "aggressive" style of play that Detroit became a premier NBA team. Their fans affectionately called them "The Bad Boys." Basketball aficionados, however, called them bullies and blamed "The Bad Boys" for the league's downward spiral, a spiral thath saw the league fall from its pinnacle of excitement in the 1980s to its nadir of unwatchability in following years.
 The Bad Boy era peaked with back-to-back titles in 1989 and 1990. Led by king of the sissy-slap, Isaiah Thomas, and a supporting cast of the much hated Bill Laimbeer, the hard-fouling Rick Mahorn, and NBA nutcase Dennis Rodman, the Bad Boy Pistons toppled the Lakers and Celtics to become the NBA's top team.
In addition to its collection of professional wrestler types, the Bad Boy Pistons also included some Good Boys as well, the most notable being guard Joe Dumars, whose defensive prowess frustrated opponents and whose offensive smarts perfectly complemented the skills of his all-star backcourt mate Thomas. The Pistons also relied heavily on backup guard Vinnie "Microwave" Johnson, whose sharp shooting off the bench often ignited Piston rallies.
The Bad Boy Era in Detroit came to an end with its loss to Michael Jordan's Bulls in the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals; however, the team's legacy still lives on in cheap fouls, 24 second shot clock violations, and non-stop hand-checking. In addition, John Salley, a key sub on the two title teams, became the worst TV studio analyst in the history of the sport with inane post game analysis, contrived discussion, and stale humor.
The Pistons struggled in the 1990s, but a new century brought back memories of the Bad Boys' success. Under the tutelage of Larry Brown, the team returned to the NBA finals in 2004 where it dominated a heavily favored L.A. Lakers in 5 games. Much like the Bad Boys, the 2004 version of the Pistons, led by the out-of-control king of technical fouls Rasheed Wallace, and perhaps the ugliest assemblage of basketball players in the history of mankind, the Detroit Pistons ruled the NBA.
Unlike the Bad Boys, this Pistons team did not repeat as champs. In fact, this collection of troglodytes will be remembered more for its participation in the greatest fight in the history of team sports: towards the end of an early season contest against the Indiana Pacers, a brawl broke out between players on both teams that spilled into the stands, causing a near riot. Suspensions soon followed, completely crippling the Pacer franchise. Detroit managed, however, to ride out the controversy and remain a strong contender for the title.
The 2007/2008 rendition of the Detroit Pistons is similar to the 2004 team that won it all, and with its deliberate pace, unwatchable offensive sets, and chippy defense, they just might win it all again.