Throughout generations, public schools have faced a number of issues, ranging from structural issues in schools to mental health issues within the student body. The primary issue I have chosen to address is standardized testing within public school systems. This is a crucial issue because I believe that standardized testing is not an efficient manner of determining whether a child should proceed to the next grade level. Not only do the students face pressure to do well on standardized tests, “...teachers face pressure to improve scores and...schools serving low-income students are more likely to implement a style of teaching based on drilling and memorization that leads to little learning” (Morgan 2). These exams do not show a student’s true academic capabilities due to the fact that they are under extreme pressure to perform well. Furthermore, standardized testing is extremely expensive and is not worth the money. Standardized tests became a K-12 mandatory policy when it became evident that the educational system was not meeting the needs to have a competitive workforce in the economy (Teaching To The Test).
One idea that might resolve the issue of standardized testing can be to take away the standardized tests and reallocate the funds into a better way of evaluating students' dexterity. Schools can make testing students a regular practice in school to keep them on track for their education. Furthermore, the schools can implicate the idea of using portfolios that keep track of assignments throughout the year such as presentations, projects, and assessments and look back at the progress that the individual has made over the year. Another option that the schools can implicate is to hire assessors to evaluate the student's and teacher’s productivity. In order for these changes to be implicated in the school district, they would need to reallocate the money used for the standardized tests to different parts of the school that would benefit the students. These new solutions would be better than what is in place right now because standardized testing creates a high level of stress for a lot of students and this new solution does not dictate whether a child passes a grade level off of one test. Another reason why taking away standardized testing is the best option is because of the amount of money that it costs schools to contract with testing companies. In order for these solutions to work the school would need to redirect the testing money toward assignments for the children throughout the year and a percentage to the teacher’s salaries.
In order for this issue to be resolved the teachers at the schools and the Texas State Legislature would need to be actively involved. The main audience is the Texas State Legislature due to the fact they are in charge of how much schools spend each year and are in approval of standardized testing. The teachers would be involved in this issue because if changes are made, their salaries would change because funds could be redirected to a certain percentage of money to their salaries. Some of the things that would stop these groups of individuals from agreeing with my proposal would be that some of them would have different opinions on this topic and think that standardized testing is beneficial to students and does not waste money. The companies that have a stake in this issue would be the provider of the standardized test so obviously they would have a negative impact if standardized tests were eliminated from schools. The most effective way to reach and propose this problem to the Texas State Legislature and teachers would be a professional letter with factual information or a video with actual students confessing how standardized testing makes them feel.
To make sure my letter is intelligent and factual, the only sources I will use in the letter would be academic journals, factual magazine articles, and possibly statements from different people that have taken standardized testing. In order to find this research, I will go through different databases and different books not limited to those options. My greatest difficulty when it comes to writing and research is not finding the exact information I want and reading all of the different articles and then still struggling to find the information I want to use in my essays. To help with the difficulty in this semester, I will attempt to search for specific topics and utilize the new databases that are provided to the student body, as well as ask friends for referrals to scholarly websites or articles that they believe were beneficial to their research.