Understanding the Issues: Education

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by onlydarksets

Fair enough, but if your entire curriculum for English focuses on logical thinking, have you formed the foundation for English that is necessary to learn writing skills over the 12 years of school (vocabulary, grammar, etc)? Same for any other subject.

As long as your school/teachers are striking the appropriate balance between teaching the core material and teaching how to analyze the questions, then I think the kids are in good shape. Remember, kids don't take these tests every year. They take them in like 1st grade, then 4th, then 7th, then 11th. Or something like that (I don't know the exact years). But my point is there are like 3 or 4 years between tests. In all that time, kids are not spending an inordinate amount of time on the test analysis. They're getting the building blocks over time, then when they come to the year for test time, then they get the analysis stuff.

I'll bet if you ask 4th grade teachers (or whatever year they administer the test), they're probably the ones most aggravated and affected. The other teachers probably don't care much, as they get to focus on core curriculum.

[steveo395]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

As long as your school/teachers are striking the appropriate balance between teaching the core material and teaching how to analyze the questions, then I think the kids are in good shape. Remember, kids don't take these tests every year. They take them in like 1st grade, then 4th, then 7th, then 11th. Or something like that (I don't know the exact years). But my point is there are like 3 or 4 years between tests. In all that time, kids are not spending an inordinate amount of time on the test analysis. They're getting the building blocks over time, then when they come to the year for test time, then they get the analysis stuff.

I'll bet if you ask 4th grade teachers (or whatever year they administer the test), they're probably the ones most aggravated and affected. The other teachers probably don't care much, as they get to focus on core curriculum.

I remember I had big standardized tests in 4th, 8th, and 11th grade and there was very little review for all of them. We would get a little bit of practice with them in the couple weeks before the tests and that was about it. There was very little standardized test review throughout the whole time I was in school. And I just graduated high school a year ago, so this was not very long ago.

[724Skinsfan]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

As long as your school/teachers are striking the appropriate balance between teaching the core material and teaching how to analyze the questions, then I think the kids are in good shape. Remember, kids don't take these tests every year. They take them in like 1st grade, then 4th, then 7th, then 11th. Or something like that (I don't know the exact years). But my point is there are like 3 or 4 years between tests. In all that time, kids are not spending an inordinate amount of time on the test analysis. They're getting the building blocks over time, then when they come to the year for test time, then they get the analysis stuff.

I'll bet if you ask 4th grade teachers (or whatever year they administer the test), they're probably the ones most aggravated and affected. The other teachers probably don't care much, as they get to focus on core curriculum.

In Virginia, the SOL's are taken every grade level except kindergarten. I'm fairly certain that any state that wants to keep receiving federal money for meeting the No Child Left Behind requirements has to have some form of yearly standardized testing for every grade level.