Educational Assessment

According to my educator friends, teaching in the public school system is all about improving test scores.  Teachers are expected to teach test taking skills constantly, to create all assessments that look like their respective state tests, and to drill students about test skills daily.  In my limited experience standardized testing provides a great measuring tool to see what students have measured and how they compare to their national counterparts.  However, I do not believe that one standard assessment given one day of the year should be used to determine what a child truly knows, to determine if teachers are teaching, or to determine if schools are effective.  Test day is only a few hours of a child's life. Some people are not good test takers. Some have bad days.  Some are spiteful.  In my opinion, standardized tests should be triangulated with student portfolios, and teacher made tests to determine mastery. 

Assessments around the World

The best testing regimes, such as one finds in many European and Asian countries, capture the benefits through multi-level and multi-target systems.  Multi-level means administering high-stakes tests at more than just one educational level (i.e., primary, intermediate, lower and upper secondary).  European and Asian students typically face high-stakes tests at the beginning or the end (or both) of one educational level, and often for more than one educational level (e.g., the end of primary school, the beginning and end of lower- and upper-secondary school, the beginning of postsecondary education, etc.).

European and Asian examination systems exist in a variety that reflects the educational programs offered. Students are differentiated by curricular emphasis and ability level, and so are their high-stakes examinations. The differentiation, which starts at the lower-secondary (i.e., middle school) level in many countries, exists in virtually all of them by the upper-secondary level. Students attend schools with vastly different occupational orientations: advanced academic schools to prepare for university; general schools, for the working world or for advanced technical training; and vocational-technical schools, for direct entry into a skilled trade.  Typically, all three types of school require an exit examination for a diploma. Some of those exams are very tough.

 http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ750639.pdf