Standardized Testing In The Georgia Department Of Education

Introduction

Standardized testing is a way for local, state school boards, and the US Department of Education to assess how well the students in that state have “learned” the material they were taught that year. These assessments are generally given in April in the state of Georgia. The current system of testing students in the state of Georgia is called the Georgia Milestones Assessment System. According the Georgia Department of Education, “The Geogria Milestones is a comprehensive summative assessment program spanning grades 3 through high school (GADOE).” The statistics that are collected from these assessments are used by both state and national governments when deciding on school funding. Some school systems also use individual teacher

The first tests were made around 2200 B.C. by the ancient Chinese. While Plato and Aristotle did not design tests, they did write on the intellectual differences from person to person. Many of the early tests were spoken. It was not until the late 1800s and early 1900s that test began to become more important. The first intelligence tests were developed in 1904 by Binet and Simon to determine which children were not fit to receive a classical education. The SAT, which is a college entrance exam, was first introduced in 1926. In the 1940s and 1950s saw psychologists and educators becoming increasing interested and obsessed with how best to measure a students’ intellect. In the early 1980s students across the United States began taking high school exit exams administered by individual states. In 2002 with the passing of No Child Left behind end of the year standardized tests became the norm in many classrooms from first grade until gradation (Gunzelmann 2005). Which, is very much the same situation the United States is still in, though the state of Georgia has replaced its previous CRCT system with the Georgia Milestones, which assess children stating in third grade rather than first grade

This quote gives a great sense of the way most of the American public feel about standardized testing, especially the two groups who are most affected by it, teachers and students. This huge emphasis on standardized testing over the last fifteen odd years, since the introduction of No Child Left Behind in 2002, has entirely altered the way teachers teach and students learn. There is no doubt that there needs to be a system of assessing students at the end of the school year if the United States plans on moving toward a system of national standards, like Common Core. The current system is ineffective and does not actually assess what students have learned, but rather what they have memorized. For example, when millennials are asked what they learned in high school they are more likely to say “the mitochondria is the power house of the cell” or, instead of actually being able to explain what the mitochondria does. This is not affective learning. Learning the material at such a surface level is not good enough. There are too many students entering college without a solid foundation because they have spent the last thirteen years of their life worrying about test taking rather than learning. To learn