Running head: LEARNING ACTIVITY ONE 1
Learning Activity One
Name
Institution
LEARNING ACTIVITY ONE 2
Learning Activity One
High-Stakes Testing Concept
High-state testing refers to a method of determining the performance of an individual, a
school, or a community based on the assessment of individual people (Eggen & Stobart, 2015).
High-stakes tests adds much pressure on educators and schools to make high test results in a
particular period, failure to which the teacher may experience the consequences associated with
the results through some penalties such as personnel termination, salary restriction, and reduced
funding. Teachers and administrators are considered to be responsible for the performance of the
students within the classroom or the entire institution. Such pressure makes the teachers and the
administrators to put more efforts to produce good results.
Response to Critics of High-Stakes Tests
High-stakes testing critics mostly provide the negative impacts that arise from the test in
class. One of the adverse effects of the high-stakes testing, according to critics, is narrowing
down the curriculum system through its exclusion from the subject matter that is not tested.
Secondly, the elimination of topics that are likely to be seen in the test or that are not likely to be
tested is common. In other cases, there is a reduction of learning to memorization facts that are
recalled easily for the tests involving multiple choices. Due to the increased use of test and
understanding on the test techniques, the critics for this method believe that the method only
enables the students to raise their scores rather than improving their learning knowledge
(Diamond & Persson, 2016).
Personal Response to My Experience on High-Stakes Tests
High-stakes tests has contributed to the shifting of education from a perspective where it
is considered as an indicator of learning improvement to an increased frequency of using tests as
a technique of raising the scores of an individual. Teachers and schools give less emphasis on the
LEARNING ACTIVITY ONE 3
actual understanding of a student to grow in terms of education and put more emphasis on the
score that a student attains in a test, regardless of how the scores are achieved. In such cases, the
aspect of cheating increases in schools as students try their best to get a high score (Perry & Pell,
2012). I have personally experienced such a scenario in a school where students did not
understand what their teachers were teaching, but due to the strong desire of getting high scores,
the students were forced to cheat in exams.
Arguments of Using High-Stakes Testing
The Arguments for the Tests
Among several arguments regarding the use of the high-stakes test in schools one of the
aspects that support the use of the method states that the high-stakes testing provides critical
measures of abilities, knowledge, and skills of a student. The second argument indicates that the
tests help to motivate the administrators, teachers, and the students to make more efforts of
boosting their achievements. The third argument shows that the testing method indicates the
areas that need more attention from the teachers to make more efforts to ensure that the students
have understood the entire topic.
The Arguments against the Tests
One of the cases that challenge the method is that the High-stakes testing makes the
students not to understand the entire subject since the educator focuses on teaching particular
areas that they believe would be tested (Croft et al., 2015). Secondly, the tests discourage the
poor minority students found in underfunded schools since their teachers teach extensively but
later fail the tests due to lack of understanding on the technique compared to the students found
in middle and high funded schools. Lastly, the method contributes to punishments among the
under-performers regardless of teaching shallow materials.
LEARNING ACTIVITY ONE 4
References
Croft, S. J., Roberts, M. A., & Stenhouse, V. L. (2015). The perfect storm of education reform:
High-stakes testing and teacher evaluation. Social Justice, 42(1).
Diamond, R., & Persson, P. (2016). The long-term consequences of teacher discretion in the
grading of high-stakes tests (No. w22207). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Eggen, T. J., & Stobart, G. (Eds.). (2015). High-stakes testing in education: Value, fairness, and
consequences. Routledge.
Perry, J. & Pell, M. B. (2012). Cheating our children: Suspicious school test scores across the
nation. Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
