Standardized Testing Essay Example for Free

Standardized Testing Essay Standardized testing is seen as the answering to improving public education in the United States. Students face district- and state- mandated tests as well as national ones. However, standardized testing is not the answer to improving education. Teaching skills and learning environments both are effective ways to improve education. Tests are only used to evaluate how well a teacher is doing, therefore students shouldn’t have to take them. â€Å"Giving answers under pressure without help or guidance, knowing no second chance will be given to pass is stressful (Mori, 139). Kids in today’s generation are expected to understand so much more than they need to. According to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002 the United States dropped from 18th in the world of math on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) to 31st in 2009. A similar decrease was made in the science category but no change was made in the reading assessment. Also research has been done by the National Research Council to prove that standardized testing doesn’t help the education. Standardized testing has also been claimed to be an unreliable source when it comes to determining the students’ performance. Long term changes aren’t even caused, only temporary changes in the students learning due to the studying for that specific test. After the test is out of the way children tend to forget the information. Testing brings out the anxiety in young students. The students often react to tests by vomiting, crying, or sometimes even both (http://standardizedtests.procon.org/). Tests that inflict so much pressure on one student cant possibly be helpful with improving education. Teaching skills play a major role in the improving of public education but, students can only learn as much as they are taught. Being handed a packet of information and being told to fill in the blanks is only going to show that the student can fill in the blanks. Students need the information explained and repeated so they can remember it further on in their life. When teachers are enthusiastic about a certain subject they can catch the students attention. Teachers who talk all period just bore students causing their minds to wander. A few days later a test is in front of them and they have no clue what its about. Gettting students interested in different subjects will make them want to work harder and do good on the tests. Also the teacher has to have a welcoming personality. If a student is interested in  learning about history but disagrees with the teachers ideas on teaching, the student may choose to purposely do bad on the tests so the teacher looks bad. Elementary school teachers keep the minds of children intersted in school by games and activites. Then as the child goes through middle school the teachers become slightly boring. No more pictures and diagrams or even a break in learning is used. Then high school is there in the blink of an eye and all fun is out of learning. Its all about colleges, good grades, and preparing for the future. Standardized tests cant help education improve if students arent worrying about current events in their life. Improvements in learning environments would help public education increase. From what children observe at a young age helps determine how they will be in life. To build a good learning environment both the psychologists and instructionalists perspectives are needed. People learn by experience, not by reading books and taking tests. For example, think about when going to get a job. The person needing a job will be taught by being shown what to do, how to react, and how things work (http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/research/CMC/andrea95/node4.html). The people getting a new job dont learn by reading text then answering questions; they learn by hands-on expierence (some places should offer IQ tests but unfortunately they dont). Also heighly effective teaching and learning environments should make the students feel safe and welcome. Classroom effort should be shown and the teacher should praise it. If students dont work with teachers to improve situations the information being taught will be forgotten. By showing the information is still remembered a few days later makes the teacher feel as if he/she is doing well so she will continue to do so. Improving public education shouldnt be just about standardized testing. Teacher, students, and parents all need to work together to encourage children to strive to do better. All of this information simply proves that tests show nothing more than teachers ability. The tests students are required to take such as state- and district- mandated tests shouldnt even be in the cirriculum. Information on each of these tests is from each marking period which means its forgotten by the time the nest one is ready.

Commanding Heights :: essays research papers

The role that the government played in chapter two, â€Å"The Curse of Bigness,† of Commanding Heights in relation to the rest of the world was to create regulations. The New Deal was what was created to establish the rules and regulations in the United States, in regards to the stock market. It also created jobs by using government programs such as TVA. The TVA program was initiated in order to create jobs, which they were hoping would help boost up the stock market. Luckily as they had planed it did in fact create more job availability which did in turn boost the stock market thus helping the entire economy, as it was trying to crawl out of the depression. By the late nineteenth century the United States was on its way to becoming an industrial nation. This is due to the creation of the interstate commerce commission (ICC). The ICC was the first major attempt by the government to control the economy. The economy at this time was based on the railroads across the country and the ICC was created to regulate the railroads. The ICC regulated rates as well as required just treatment of shippers and communities. The ICC became the model for future regulatory commissions. The government found regulation necessary only after the local newspapers bashed the country because of its industrial setting. The term â€Å"muckrakers† was use by President Theodore Roosevelt in order to insult the media that was bashing America’s image. The majority of the government regulation was focused on one issue. The issue the government was worried the most about was bigness and monopolies. The monopolies appeared to have only one intention and that one intention was to extinguish the atomistic world of small, family-owned enterprises. The monopolies were referred to as â€Å"the red hot event.† What the muckrakers were saying by this is that the number one focus at this time of the economy was definitely the monopolies. President Roosevelt felt that not all monopolies were bad. He separated the monopolies into â€Å"good trust and bad trust.† He felt that monopolies should be scrutinized under the publics’ eye.

Murder of Emmett Till Essay

Emmett Till was a fourteen year old boy who lived in Chicago. He was very outgoing and friendly with everyone he met. After his uncle, Moses (Moh-ss) Wright, came up to visit, he took Emmett and his cousin down to Money, Mississippi. Before he left, his mother informed him that life is very, very different for blacks in the South and the way he acted at home could not be the same as how he acted down there. He didn’t believe her warnings. As Emmett and his mother got to the train station Emmett ran for the train in haste as to not miss his ride. Mamie Till, his mother, yelled to him â€Å"Emmett, aren’t you gonna say good bye? What if I never see you again?† Emmett said, â€Å"Awhh mama.† Then he gave her a kiss on the cheek and handed her his watch so that she had part of him while he was away. She asked about his father’s ring and he said he was, â€Å"going to show it off to the boys† and was on his way without regard to his mother’s warnings. Money, Mississippi was just a stretch of road with a post office on one end and Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market at the other. Bryant’s sold cool drinks to passing field workers and candy to the neighborhood children. So African Americans were often regulars. As Mamie had said, the south was like a whole other world compared to Chicago. In the south, when a white woman would walk down the sidewalk and a black man was walking towards her, he would have to get off the sidewalk and look at the ground because a black male can never look a white woman in the eyes. Blacks weren’t even allowed to enter through the front doors of white businesses. Moses Wright worked on a field picking cotton. He lived in a small shack on the plantation that he worked for. There were only three small rooms in the shack so everyone squeezed in to the available beds. Emmett had to sleep with his cousin in one room; Moses was in another and in the other room, Wheeler Parker, Emmett’s close cousin and the others. While there Emmet and his cousins would help Moses in the field. On August 24, the boys drove into town from the field and went in to Bryant’s Grocery to get candy and drinks. Emmett went in and purchased two cents worth of bubble gum and on the way out turned back to Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the owner of Bryant’s Grocery, and whistled to her. She was furious and ran out to chase the boys, so they got in the car and drove off to their uncle’s house. While driving home Emmett begged his cousins not to tell Moses of the events that occurred. After three days, the boys forgot about the whole scenario. On the fourth night, at about 2:30 am while everyone lay asleep in bed, Roy Bryant, Carolyn’s husband, and his brother J.W. Milam broke into the house. They went into the first room to find Moses sleeping and woke him, shinning a flashlight in his eye and holding a rifle to his head and asked where Emmett was. Moses pleads for them to leave the boy alone but they did not listen and went into Emmett’s room and kidnapped him. Days went by with no word, so as does most blacks when someone goes missing, they started to check around the Tallahassee River, to try to find his body. Days later, a young man fishing in the Tallahatchie reported Emmett’s body floating in the nearby weeds. When Moses went to identify the body, the only way he could verify that it was Emmett, was by his father’s ring that was on his finger. Both men were arrested and set to be tried in the Tallahatchie County Court in September of 1955 for the murder of Emmett Till. The friends of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam as well as other white families collected money to buy every lawyer they could for the two. When it came to the trial the defenses main strategy was that the body could not be identified as Emmett Till. They claimed that Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam let him go alive. Any Black people that came forward with information for the prosecution mysteriously disappeared so most remained neutral to avoid having the same fate. The two men were acquitted and set free, Mamie Till sent to higher courts and even President Eisenhower, who all refused to investigate further. After the trail Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam sold their story about what they did to Look Magazine. They made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. They beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body in; with the cotton-gin fan tie around his neck with barbed wire, his body sank into the river. After the story was published and the government did nothing about it, Mamie Till and All African Americans in America, realized the magnitude of their predicament. They knew that their rights as humans were at risk. Thus, the murder of Emmett Till became renowned as the spark that began the Civil Rights Movement.

I Am Woman, Hear My Cry Essay - 1163 Words

Humans have a unique ability to express themselves clearly and profoundly without speaking a word. The way a person sighs, cries, screams, or groans exposes his emotion and state of mind. It is a gift that all humans bear, this power to display emotion through instinctual sound. Novelist Alan Paton has a strong grasp on this aspect of the human condition, exemplifying this in his treatment of women in the novel Cry, the Beloved Country. In Paton’s stark, poetic prose, the mere manner in which a woman laughs or weeps symbolizes an entire volume of depth and feeling, providing the reader with a glimpse into the inner workings of gender roles in South African society. Through the laughter and the wailing in Cry, the Beloved Country, Paton†¦show more content†¦Therefore, she is merely herself. But as Paton reveals through Gertrude later on, a native woman with nothing but her name does not live as unhindered a life as one might expect. Mrs. Lithebe, who allows Kumalo to rent a room in her home, is an ideal native woman; she is calm, gentle, and kind. Like other respectable native women such as Mrs. Mkize or Mrs. Ndlela, the men address Mrs. Lithebe as â€Å"mother,† and she only speaks when in her proper place: the household. Female characters such as Gertrude and Absalom’s girlfriend are pariahs compared to the traditional South African image of a pious native woman, reigning in the comfortable domain of the home. Yet despite her warm disposition, Mrs. Lithebe also wields a hidden shrewdness. One memorable conversation between Mrs. Lithebe and Absalom’s girlfriend reveals the older woman’s wisdom. When Mrs. Lithebe hears Gertrude and Absalom’s girlfriend laughing in a distasteful manner, she confronts the foolish young girl with harsh but honest words: â€Å"You will not laugh so carelessly†¦ You are but a child, and laughter is good for a child. But there is one kind of a laughter, and there is another† (120). Paton leaves the definition of â€Å"careless laughter† vague to the reader, but Mrs. Lithebe’s meaning is perfectly clear to the girl. In terms of the novel’s themes, the careless laughter serves asShow MoreRelatedThat Woman Cried1463 Words   |  6 PagesThat Woman Cried Written by KyuSe7en501 Note: Forgive me if I ain’t good in writing. T_T Twenty- fourth of January a woman appeared before my eyes. She was crying, really, really hard. I didn’t know what to do, I was at a total loss of words. Since then, I started wondering why women cry; are they just fond of crying, or, do they cry for something men don’t understand? As a man myself I want to know the answer. Not that I love to interfere with their sorrows but I just want to have my curiosityRead MoreAnalysis Of The Poem Hairspray 1184 Words   |  5 Pagesdarting around looking for an exit, nothing. Then we hear the thudding footsteps growing louder so that it sounds echo all around- we are trying to find its origin but we can’t. 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I would fall asleep to the soothing sound of my heavy breathing, to the feeling of dried up tears on my face, to swollen eyes, to a soaked, wet pillow and to the echoes of my mother’sRead MorePersonal Narrative : My Grandmother And I Share A Special Connection800 Words   |  4 PagesI was born in the United Stated so by default I never met any of my grandparents. My parents and I are immigrants from Somalia, and my maternal Grandmother resided in Kismayo, the port city of south Somalia. My Grandmother and I share a special connection, we share the same name, we are Sammi. My Mother says I have her eyes and hair, my mother told me she had the most vibrant brown eyes as a young woman, and when she grew in age, her eyes turn light blue with a dark blue ring around her iris. WeRead MoreNarrative Speech Monologue879 Words   |  4 Pages14,346 Today I am in a girls body. Her name is Rachel Levine. I access my memory to learn about her. 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In the afternoons, when my older siblings come home from school, I am passed around; each takes their turn with me, trying to getRead MoreNarrative Essay About My Grandmother987 Words   |  4 PagesGrandmother— a person who cares for you through thick, thin, the good, and the bad. There once was a time when my grandmother was healthy and able to take care of me that was until she got sick and it all turned around. Being with her during that time until she passed away was a difficult experience for me; it was also difficult for the whole family. It all started when she went to the hospital on Thanksgiving because she wasn’t feeling too well and there were other underlying problems. She wasRead MoreGraduation Speech - Original Writing Essay1716 Words   |  7 PagesMy mom has kept everything in the house the way it was before. It has the same furniture and the same pictures on the wall. It’s minimal with a nice brown couch and a wooden coffee table across the fireplace. He had some pictures he bought years ago organized neatly in their own individual spaces. Everything is here except the empty coffee mugs, randomly opened books, his ashtray, and the classic music he loved to fill his home with. The door was unlocked when I came in. I can hear my mom speakingRead More The Importance of Language in Clare Rossini’s Final Love Note and Louise Gluck’s Mock Orange1515 Words   |  7 Pagessensual love or brotherly love; friendship is frequently described as a type of love, as well. This abstraction can also be distorted and made to fit into categories that would normally be associated with negativity and abuse not love. Think of why a woman will continually go back to an abusive spouse with the irrational reason that he loves me. If he loved you, he wouldnt beat you†¦Would he? In a poem, the confusion seems only to extend, as writers will describe a beautiful event that is tainted byRead MoreYou Can Do This Annie. Be Brave. Essay example1426 Words   |  6 PagesWhen I wake up, I’m still in my trailer. I rub my eyes, and sit up. Stretching, I glance down at myself and I do a double take. I’m wearing an old sea-green dress. It has short sleeves, a hem that goes to my knees, and a fitted middle. On my feet are white canvas shoes that are scuffed at the edges. I stand up, shaky, and walk to my mirror. My hair is parted in the middle, and I find that it’s been dyed a darker red and has been curled as well. Makeup, which makes me look younger, shows on my face