In this series of articles we looked at the No Child Left Behind Act, it's history, guidelines, costs, and effects on classrooms and students. In this last article we will look at other options for evaluating students in the class.
The No Child Left Behind Act has been set forth to solve inequalities in testing. There are inequalities in testing with economically disadvantaged students, minority students, and students with disabilities. The testing gap is in hopes of coming closer together by 2014. There have been no federal standards set forth though with every state regarding testing. For instance some states have norm referenced tests while other states use criterion referenced tests. If there is no set standard then how do we know what to really go by?
I think the testing takes up way too much class and learning time. This time is valuable for students especially students who fall below par. Since the No Child Left Behind Act has been put into effect I have seen many students fail consistently in the public school system. I also find that testing children is not the best way to assess and may very well be unreliable. There has to be other ways to determine assessment for children, such as portfolios which I have noted above. Portfolios would at least allow evaluation of many diverse works from the student not just one set test. The portfolio would also allow for multiple intelligences to be seen not just mathematical, language, or science ability.
"The use of portfolio-based teacher appraisals has emerged as an intriguing option to makethe time required for teacher evaluation more productive andthe process more meaningful, comprehensive, and accurate." (Attinello, Lare, & Waters, 2006) While there are some disadvantages with the portfolio it is an up an coming assessment tool not only for students but for teacher's professional growth.
While standardized tests are more reliable compared to the portfolio, more educational psychologists are reccomending the portfolio as the alternative assessment. Since it is such a new assessment process, kinks can be worked out and hopefully soon we as teachers will all be including some sort of portfolio assessment in our student's evaluation.