3 ms·

> The benefits of them (I guess), is that you can collect data on how kids are doing around various parts of the country, and maybe look at some areas where the

by zmmmmm 13y ago

> The benefits of them (I guess), is that you can collect data on how kids are doing around various parts of the country, and maybe look at some areas where the kids are doing poorer than others to see if the education is lacking. The thing is - this is easily achievable by sampling. You don't need to test every single kid to figure out broad trends. The tests reveal nothing at that level that couldn't be ascertained through other means. > I don't see any downsides at all other than "my kids might get stressed" which is rather silly. The biggest downside is that inevitably the minute such a system is introduced nearly the entire educational program becomes bent on preparing kids for the test. If it can't be tested, it just falls through the cracks and isn't taught. But we all know schooling, especially in younger years, is about so much more than being able to reproduce a small set of measurable skills. I also think your "rather silly" comment is a bit flippant. For someone who is not bothered by tests this might seem reasonable. But for kids that are not ready, introducing them to high stress testing situations can scar them badly and impair their performance for life. For a child that does not react well (through lack of maturity) to a testing environment, it means inevitably they will do very poorly on the test, which will feed back into their self esteem and have a high risk of setting back their educational progress.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
You don't need to test every single kid to figure out broad trends. To determine the performance of an individual teacher, you pretty much do. You want to measure teacher performance from a sample of 5/30 students? Too noisy. Even 30 students is far from ideal. Testing every child is also a great way to prevent schools from "randomly" cherrypicking which students take the test.
Tehnix 13y ago
>I also think your "rather silly" comment is a bit flippant. For someone who is not bothered by tests this might seem reasonable. It's not like I love exams myself? This is simply something people should learn to deal with. >But for kids that are not ready, introducing them to high stress testing situations can scar them badly and impair their performance for life. If your kid gets scared for life by a test, then I'm afraid you simply haven't prepared them for life at all. Test might be frightening, I'll grant you that, but it's such a normal part of the education system and a lot of other things, that it simply is something one must learn to cope with in some way or another. There's often counseling or guidance you can get if you really have anxiety. >it means inevitably they will do very poorly on the test, which will feed back into their self esteem and have a high risk of setting back their educational progress. Then you deal with that by helping them as I mentioned in the last sentence in the paragraph before. It can also be an indicator that the child simply hasn't learned what it was expected to have learned, and therefore isn't ready to progress yet. Kids aren't fragile little things that'll break so easily. I'll stand on my earlier claim and would say "sparing" them of such things will do more harm to them later on in their life than it will do them good. You can't always hold you child in the hand, and if they never learn to deal with stressful situations it will have a much larger impact later on in life.

by zmmmmm 13y ago

yummyfajitas 13y ago

You don't need to test every single kid to figure out broad trends. To determine the performance of an individual teacher, you pretty much do. You want to measure teacher performance from a sample of 5/30 students? Too noisy. Even 30 students is far from ideal. Testing every child is also a great way to prevent schools from "randomly" cherrypicking which students take the test.

Tehnix 13y ago

>I also think your "rather silly" comment is a bit flippant. For someone who is not bothered by tests this might seem reasonable. It's not like I love exams myself? This is simply something people should learn to deal with. >But for kids that are not ready, introducing them to high stress testing situations can scar them badly and impair their performance for life. If your kid gets scared for life by a test, then I'm afraid you simply haven't prepared them for life at all. Test might be frightening, I'll grant you that, but it's such a normal part of the education system and a lot of other things, that it simply is something one must learn to cope with in some way or another. There's often counseling or guidance you can get if you really have anxiety. >it means inevitably they will do very poorly on the test, which will feed back into their self esteem and have a high risk of setting back their educational progress. Then you deal with that by helping them as I mentioned in the last sentence in the paragraph before. It can also be an indicator that the child simply hasn't learned what it was expected to have learned, and therefore isn't ready to progress yet. Kids aren't fragile little things that'll break so easily. I'll stand on my earlier claim and would say "sparing" them of such things will do more harm to them later on in their life than it will do them good. You can't always hold you child in the hand, and if they never learn to deal with stressful situations it will have a much larger impact later on in life.