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Quote by: Inlineskater  There is (in my opinion) a problem about that in the U.S.They have the SATS and I think there is another major crucial one. And of course they have benchmarks and SOLs (at least in Virginia, not sure about other states) and it really adds up. And for most students taking a test is stressful, and they have to study for all of those. So by the time it is summer, the kids who do well are the kids who don't have a life. They spend too much time taking tests and worrying about them, wrather than learning, which is what you're are supposed to do anyways. These tests can make life miserable for a high schoolers hopeful of getting into a good college. Not to mention, to pay for said college what will they be doing in the summer after all that? Working! I think that a standardised test on everything they learned in the year at the end of the year which pretty much decides ones future wrong. I wouldn't want them to have a standardised test, cause if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.
And they wonder why so many kids are doing drugs... |
When I was in high school, I didn't worry about tests because I focused on learning the material taught in class and in the homework. I took the tests and got what I got - and I still managed to graduate in the top 10 percent of my high school class. I took the ACT without being particularly worried about it. Starting in eighth grade, because I went to school in New York State, I took the State's regents examinations. Again, I wasn't particularly worried about the results and I still did well. My daughter is in high school now and she's not particularly worried about taking the SAT (and the ACT; she plans to take both). I've always told my daughter that if she knows the material she learned in class, she'll always do reasonably well on the tests.
Teach the students what they need to learn and teach them to take responsibility for what they learn. Then test what they've learned and let the chips fall where they may. It all comes down to enforcing grade level: don't let a student leave a particular grade until he has fully mastered that grade.