Standardized Testing Chapter Summary

The more that I read this book, the mores feelings I develop about students’ needs in the math classroom and education as a whole. In chapter 4, the author discussed a lot about standardized testing. There was a lot of interesting facts and information about this topic. As a education student, I know about standardized testing and I know that teachers change their teaching methods to help increase or at least try to increase students’ test scores, but in the process they lose interest of their best practices along with their students. Teachers also have a tendency to move too fast and just teach the content then move on. The book compared it to a plane landing and taking off to go somewhere else either with or without the assigned passengers.

I remember in school that many of my peers would not do very well on the summative test, but it wouldn’t matter because we wouldn’t go over the material anymore; it was onto the next chapter. Something interesting that I Chapter 4 talked about was the idea of multiple choice answers compared to short answers. “First, they want to assess understanding, which includes the thinking that children do and that they express in words, numbers, and symbols. What children choose to put on paper is the best indicator of what they understand, not their choice of one out of four options, none of which may men anything to them.” (pg. 86) I found this very interesting because it would make more sense to test students on their ability to problem solve for a math standardized test rather than testing them regurgitating information that the teachers provide them. I don’t think I would have ever thought about having standardized test as short answer just because I feel like it’s never been a consideration. Reading this chapter makes me feel like it is possible to make test be less multiple choice and more short

This is something that I rarely experienced when I was in school. In the math class, it was almost the same thing everyday. We would go into class, sit at our desks. The teacher would go over the process of how to solve a problem, and then we did a couple example problems followed by working on homework. There was no room to collaborate in the classroom. The chapter also discussed about grouping students according to their ability level. Reading the first statement, “ Many parents support ability grouping because they want their high-attaining, motivated children to be working with other children,” it makes sense as to why parents think this way. (Pg. 106) At the same time though, through a student's’ perspective it is so much better to be able to collaborate with their peers especially with math. Math isn’t as concrete as we were taught in school. Working with others can help students understand the material better along with retaining the information instead of they typical regurgitation. The country that the book examined was Japan. This country has all abilities in every classroom rather than ability grouping and states, “Japanese education emphasizes group education, not individual education. Because we want everyone to improve, promote, and achieve goals together, rather than individually.” (pg. 108). This