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Standardized testing
Under the No Child Left Behind Act, all American states must test students in
public schools statewide to ensure that they are achieving the desired level of
minimum education, such as on the Regents Examinations in New York or the
Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA); students being educated at home
or in private schools are not included. The Act also requires that students and
schools show "adequate yearly progress." This means they must show some
improvement each year.
Although these tests may have revealed the results of student learning, they may
have little value to help strengthen the students' academic weakness. For
example, in most states, the results of the testing would not be known until six
months later. At that time, the students have been promoted to the next grade or
entering a new school. The students are not given a chance to review the
questions and their own answers but their percentile of the test results are
compared with their own peers. To address this situation many school districts
have implemented MAP. Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests are
state-aligned computerized adaptive assessments that measure the instructional
level of each student's growth over time.
This research based testing allows elementary school teachers to have on going
access to student progress. Teachers using this system can identify strengths
and weaknesses of individual students and remediate where necessary. When a
student fails to make adequate yearly progress, No Child Left Behind mandates
remediation through summer school and/or tutoring be made available to a given
student.
During high school, students (usually in 11th grade) may take one or more
standardized tests depending on their postsecondary education preferences and
their local graduation requirements. In theory, these tests evaluate the overall
level of knowledge and learning aptitude of the students. The SAT and ACT are
the most common standardized tests that students take when applying to college.
A student may take the SAT, ACT, or both depending upon the college the student
plans to apply to for admission. Most competitive schools also require two or
three SAT Subject Tests, (formerly known as SAT IIs), which are shorter exams
that focus strictly on a particular subject matter. However, all these tests
serve little to no purpose for students who do not move on to postsecondary
education, so they can usually be skipped without affecting one's ability to
graduate.
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