Standardized testing is a topic that is controversial among educators, the government, and practically everyone who has a child or is a student. Some people believe that standardized testing is the best way to gather a consensus on how students are performing. Others believe that testing is necessary, but it should not be the main focus in the classroom. It is difficult to gage on whether teaching quality is affected by these tests, because teaching happens behind closed doors, and teachers are not observed daily. Recently, there have been studies that prove “that instructional quality declined with the rise of high stakes testing”. When tests are being given, teachers start focusing on solely preparing their students for the test. Lesson plans revolve around increasing the students’ ability to do math and read quicker. To observe how teaching changes by the tests in places, researches analyzed five different school districts using …show more content…
They found that compared to the non-test-prep lessons, the test-prep lessons were worse, but not by a lot. As the researches analyzed they also come to the conclusion that they did the research in a Massachusetts district where the teaching and test score qualities are usually not high. Perhaps in another district, the results could have been better. In regard to feedback, they did add that when it came to the time for the teacher to give their students feedback on the test, the multiple-choice questions were not learning moments. In open-ended questions, the teacher would teach the students what the question was asking, and would give mini lessons on the topic. Blazar also added that not every test-prep lesson was poor. Some teachers did a great job of showing their students how to answer the open-ended response questions. They conclude that teaching for a test can be done well, but it is very