(Download) "Meeting the Challenge of High-Stakes Testing While Remaining Child-Centered: The Representations of Two Urban Teachers (The Transformation of Content to Increase Students' Understanding)" by Childhood Education * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Meeting the Challenge of High-Stakes Testing While Remaining Child-Centered: The Representations of Two Urban Teachers (The Transformation of Content to Increase Students' Understanding)
- Author : Childhood Education
- Release Date : January 22, 2005
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 241 KB
Description
It is incumbent upon the education research community to shed light on ways that some teachers have facilitated the success of low-income students of color on high-stakes state assessments, while remaining child-centered. Current education policies aimed at accountability create pressing dilemmas for many educators. Much research points to the potentially harmful effects of high-stakes testing on students, such as narrowing school curriculum to only that which is covered on exams (Abrams, Pedulla, & Madaus, 2003; Barksdale-Ladd & Thomas, 2000; Cimbricz, 2002; Darling-Hammond & Wise, 1985). In addition, as Blackwell (2004) pointed out, accountability has many potential hidden costs, including a weakening of teachers' personal connections with students and the loss of shared learning journeys. Although these important concerns and others have been raised about the effect of high-stakes tests on students and about the relationship between students' test scores and learning, the fact remains that students' performance on high-stakes tests is of increasing significance for their futures. For example, some states retain students or withhold high school diplomas from students who do not pass the tests. Such potential consequences undeniably create tension for educators as they attempt to balance concern for the whole child's development with concern for his or her performance on a single test. Nowhere is this reality more painfully felt than in the lives of low-income students of color and their teachers.