10/19 Entrance Slip

Are the teachers misusing tests and grading to suppress students' learning motivation? The article discusses in many cases students are stressed about grades and feel that its not the best way to learn. Conducting tests for evaluation has long being practiced at schools. It is easy for the teachers to prepare and in theory an effective way to test on students performance. The quantitative nature of a standardized test is beneficial for the teachers to excess students' process.

However the side effects of standardized tests were mentioned in the article. The tests themselves do not reflect how well the student's learnt. Many argue it forces students to memorize instead (I beg to differ on this aspect since in many cases its simply how the questions were made, in physics for example its almost not possible to do well on a well designed test without knowing the theories behind the learning units). More so than that many student use it as an indication for comparison. Coming from an Asian background this problem is very visible in society I grew up in, the general attitude toward grades and academic performance makes educators wonder what went wrong in the goals of education.

I think its very interesting to make comparison to the ranking system of professional tennis players. In that system players are evaluated with how they compared with themselves within a 12 month span. In other word the players are competing against themselves in the past. This analogy fits well with what test is all about- it should be a self reflection how how well a student has learned in the lesson unit. Once a student has a healthy mentality about tests I think one will not feel stressed or discouraged over low test score, instead it is a great indication for the parts the student still need more work on.

I do not think it is necessary to eliminate all testing aspect in the curriculum, after all it should be serve as an evaluation for learning progress. But other forms of evaluation such as researches and presentations can be introduced as an alternative ways for students to be connected with the class material. In order words tests should still be included, but with a different mindset toward it. Other learning methods are more creative, they also put more works on the teachers to prepare. For a better learning results, however, it is necessary for  teachers to adapt new ways to teach with less extrinsic indicators.