Ohio Achievement Assessment Essay

According to Ohio law, all students grades three through eight are mandated to participate in the standardized Ohio Achievement Assessment test. The Ohio Achievement Assessments (OAA) are the primary tool for measuring student performances in key subjects (Ohio Standardized Testing). The use of these standardized tests have skyrocketed after 2002’s No Child Left Behind Act. This act requires Ohio to develop or adopt curriculum content standards, pupil performance standards, and assessments linked to these, in the subjects of mathematics, reading/English language, science, and social studies (Overview). The No Child Left Behind Act was amended from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which authorizes most programs of Federal aid to the

So if this is the case, why is there so much emphasis on the OAA? For example, instruction time is being consumed by monotonous test preparation. Some schools are allocatin more than a quarter of the year’s instruction to test preparation, and going as far as pep rallies to excite the children for the OAA (procon.org). Students are not receiving the instruction they should be because the emphasis of good scores on standardized test are leading schools and teacher to “teach to the test” (Ohio Standardized). In agreement with the findings of the University of Maryland, who conducted a five year study and presented results in 2007, “the pressure teachers were feeling to ‘teach to the test’ led to declines in teaching higher-order thinking, in the amount of time spent on complex assignments, and in the actual amount of high cognitive content in the curriculum” (procon).

Furthermore, standardized testing causes severe stress in younder students of elementary and middle schools. The stress that children endure both leading up to and taking the test can be harmful and debilitating to their young lives and even into young adulthood. No child should have to cope with the stress from the OAA and other standardized tesst along with the stress many children face at home or even the overwhelming stereotypes from the media that are pushed onto the young children of today to live up