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Standardized Testing In Schools Essay

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With standardization and common curriculum in education on the rise, it is making it a gray zone with subjects like art. To make matters more difficult, school districts are evaluating and paying teachers according to their student’s achievements (Goldstein). As a future art educator, it is important that I comprehend how to properly measure my student’s knowledge of the given art material. The biggest question is should the arts be standardized and how does one create quantitative data for a topic that is undeniable subjective? Testing the arts is controversial and subjective to whomever grades the assessments. Many parents are not on board with the idea as well; they do not favor the notion of testing children who are already over-tested in other subjects. Subjects, like art, are seen are relaxing breaks from a stressful school day. According to Bob Schaeffer of FairTest, implementing standardized tests in the arts is “fundamentally ludicrous”. He also urged that the assessments are not about application of the arts, but how students memorize and repeat the …show more content…

A paper from the National Endowment for the Arts found that there are only 30 high-quality arts assessments in use in the United States. Many schools are simply relying on pencil-and-paper exams to measure students’ knowledge (Goldstein). There are two prime solutions to the standardization of the arts. These assessments could be modified to include more application-based problems, instead of a regurgitation of the specialized language. An alternative analysis could be the submission of the students’ portfolio of work from the semester, instead of forcing a piece to be creating in one testing sitting. Either way, it is clear that not nearly enough schools are assessing the arts properly with high-quality

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