As a teacher, are the results from standardized test useful to you? If yes how do you use them?

Answer 1

It depends on the test.
If you are talking about standardized tests that correllate to the textbook, then yes, I can use them to assess my students levels.

If you're talking about state tests, they have all sorts of problems.

The worst is the California English Language Development Test, or CELDT. Its testing window is in October, but we get the results back in February, and use it to place students for the next year. It's ridiculous. Anyone knows that English Language Learners, especially level 1's have a steep learning curve. By the time we get the results, they're useless.

On top of that, students have no buy in for the test. Many students entering the district just randomly bubble the test because they don't think it's important... which means I have to fight to get the student placed correctly when they show up in my level 1 class and really belong in level 4.

The California Standards Test, or CST's are also similarly flawed. Even some AP students just bubble randomly because they know it has no effect on them or their grades.

In the world of high stakes testing, the government should find a way to make the tests important for the students, not just for the school. Otherwise, students who could pass won't take them seriously.

Answer 2

I agree with what Omouse said about the standardized testing at the state level.

Often the scores do not reflect what the student knows but how good he is at test-taking. Some of the most advanced students do poorly on the CSTs, while some students who do not do well in class score much higher than expected. And as Omouse said, CELDT scores are an absolute joke.

Teachers at my school are expected to use the scores to place students in different groups for "differentiated" instruction, but in reality the teachers have to do a base-line test at the beginning of the year to find out where the student really belongs.

At my (Reading First) school we have additional standardized tests for language arts that are administered every 6 weeks. These may be more timely and accurate, but they also take away a lot of instructional time. We use the data to analyze gaps and to instruct our teaching. We do the same with district-wide (every 9 weeks) math assessments.

Ideally a teacher would do continuous informal assessments throughout the day in order to gauge where the student still needs more support, as well as assessments after lessons to see if the student has understood or mastered the concept.

Standardized tests may be good for politicians, editorial writers and real estate agents who want to compare schools, but for in-the-trenches teachers they are mostly an unavoidable nuisance.

Answer 3

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Answer 4

Standardized tests would be a sturdy indicator of a pupil's try taking skills, whether it won't degree their intelligence. The language used in standardized tests is extremely anglicized, becoming a large bias in direction of people who journey regionalisms as an appropriate, and grammatically ultimate, form of speech. all of it boils all the way down to this: No standardized try will inform you the way clever you're, or any pupil is.

Answer 5

State tests, such as the TCAP here in Tennessee are a joke. They do not test subject matter knowledge but rather general reasoning skills.
They provide information that I personally use very little and find almost useless.