Quote: "High-stakes testing is different than classroom assessment. The test scores typically provide little information for making day-to-day instructional decisions."
Comment: At the beginning of the year we as teachers will either be provided with standardized test scores of our students or will have to come up with some test scores for ourselves. It is important to remember, however, that this is just how the child did on one test. It is up to us to have the mindset that the students can and will change. It can be easy to see a test score and put a label on a student. It is much harder, however, to remove that label once it is there. It is vital that as teachers we don not use standardized assessments to label students. We need to constantly use assessments in our classroom and constantly let the students progress and actually show that they are progressing. The students will not succeed if we do not give them the opportunity to succeed. Therefore, we must use our assessments as an opportunity to show growth rather than proof that our original thought of the student was correct, whether good or bad.
I agree that classroom assessments are more important than high-stake tests. However, I dread the day that high-stake test measure the ability of a teacher and when teachers will start to depend on these test scores to tell them the challenge of keeping their jobs. As terrible as that sounds, personally I am a strong believer of the self-fulfilling prophesy and that we need to have the highest expectations as we help our students learn and increase their scores. I truly hope that as teachers we will not label our students or set them up for failure because of past scores.
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