Accountability and Testing of Standards in the Schools
by Within the realm of K-12 public education, there exists three subcultures divided by student grade level. Each subculture contains specialized administrators and teachers to teach and inspire the various age groups. Along with this comes the responsibility of creating and implementing adequate forms of assessment on each grade level. They are the elementary school years of Kindergarten through 5th, the middle school years of 6th through 8th and the high school years of 9th through 12th.
The most turbulent times of education are often debated to be middle school as students in this age are discovering themselves as individuals. This makes it especially difficult for assessments to be accurate in the classroom setting. No defined form assessment apart from the NJ ASK or GEPA standardized tests. All teachers in the district must aid in the preparation of the students to take and pass these exams each year. On the middle school level, the district fails to see the need for standardized assessment apart from these two exams and always seems surprised when the high school notifies the board of education that certain subject areas seen in our freshmen are not as strong as other sending districts to the area high school.
A large part of the problem is the adherence to only what the state provides as guidelines for assessment. “New Jersey’s statewide assessment program designed to measure the extent to which all students at the elementary-, middle- and secondary-school levels have attained New Jersey’s Core Curriculum Content Standards… only in accordance with Current national standard tests, GEPA, ASK” (New Jersey. 2006). The website for the department of education, which is used by administrators and teachers to define curriculum and lesson planning has no forms of standardization for assessment, no suggestions, not even a mention of how students should be assessed except for the ASK and GEPA. This shows blatant disregard for the educational process as it was meant to be and shows the Department of Education as only being interested in sharing accountability for the national spectrum of education.
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On May 24, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Accountability is a huge question when it comes to who is stepping up to the plate to take responsibility of educating the next generation.