Should Children be assessed?

What should be assessed: Children’s reading skills, basic math skills, and writing skills should be assessed. There should be levels a child should be on at the end of each grade level. These skills are what are needed in life and should be assessed. I don’t feel these should be given in high stakes testing but I feel should be assessed by teachers in a comfortable environment for the child. This is to ensue the child understand and has mastered the basics. I feel a before, midterm test, and end of year test should be given to children. This is to see what they know in the beginning of the year, what they need to learn in the remainder of the year, and what they have learned during the school year.  I feel in North Carolina children are introduced to high stakes testing at an early age and are tested too often in school. North Carolina uses standardized testing from 3^rd grade through 12^th grade. These test determines if the child is promoted the next grade or not. Therefore teachers are teaching children how to take the test to ensure they pass. Some children do not test well and do not do well in these testing environments. There is a lot of pressure to pass these test placed on the children. In my opinion this is nerve racking and stresses children out.

Testing in China

The Land of High-Stakes Testing

For 1,300 years, academic success and, therefore, social mobility in China were almost solely determined by a student's score on the keju, a hierarchical system of high-stakes exams administered at the end of high school. Scores on the keju determined who would be selected for China’s ruling class and placed high value on rote memorization of Confucian classics, ignoring physical labor, technology, and natural sciences.

The cultural priorities enforced by the keju's rigid and extremely narrow focus on the classics is blamed for China's failure to emerge as a military, industrial, or technological leader throughout history. Since the keju fell out of practice at the turn of the 20th century, China has adopted a similarly restrictive National College Entrance Exam, or gaokao. Like the keju, the gaokao affects the whole experience of students and teachers, from what is taught to how it is taught.

College admissions in China are based solely on gaokao scores, and a college degree is essential for most government jobs and to establish residency in many cities (only legal residents may take advantage of social services, like schools, within a city). Despite the high stakes attached to the gaokao, like the keju, it's cited for limiting innovation and creativity in the Chinese workforce. Studies also show that there is no guarantee that those with high gaokao scores have abilities that extend beyond test-taking. 

In his recent book Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, Yong Zhao concludes that, "Unless China drastically reforms the college admission system to expand the criteria beyond test scores on a few subjects, it is unlikely that any effort to nurture more creative talents and

healthy children will bear fruit."

  Retrieved from:

http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol5/502-zhao-abstract.aspx