Critical Theme #4: Balancing a Personalized education with the “?need?” for standards
Based on your discussions, a 21st Century School would have a balance between pesonalized education and the need to uphold some sort of "standard." Please use this discussion thread to share some ideas of what this might look like i.e. Provincial Exams, Virtual Course Delivery, etc.
This post was edited on: 2011-02-22 at 01:47 AM by: Terry Godwaldt (Moderator)
5 Replies
Should standardized tests play a role in our School of One?
I think that to some degree that standardized tests should be moved away from, tests should be standard in a subject area but not standard that everyone has to take them. This sounds like its destroying our entire current education system but its true because if a student is horrid at english language arts, should a student be required to take the diploma exams if they have no intent to continue their education in the english area? especially if they are an ESL student in Canada.
Personalized testing sounds like it would be a bit of a challenge to deal with but it is something we should strive to aim towards, making the tests to suit students at differing levels, more then just the different course levels such as 20-1 or 20-2 do currently.
The biggest issue I see with standardized tests is that they are weighted too much. Some individuals do not have a strength in testing. Plus we spend about 5 months in the class room which is equally weighted with an exam that takes about 2 hours.
Standardized testing is an important way of comparing students across the school system/province/country. How would universities accurately compare students otherwise? Different schools and/or teachers mark differently or have easier or harder questions. Some classes could have higher/lower marks because of this. Standardized tests provide a controlled/easily comparable evaluation of learning.
I believe that standardized tests should play a role in schools as if one intends on going to post seconndary then how could post secondary institutions compare diffent students if all the tests are individualized by school? If they were to judge students on an individual or by school basis then that would be a drain on resources that could be better used in other areas. Therefore stadardized tests can provide a benchmark for students that then individualized tests can augment
Iyarusalem
Feb 23, 2011 at 3:41 PM