Is standardized testing effective in evaluating student performance
Standardized testing has ignited a national debate in the last few years (or decades), and many parents feel understandably concerned about their children being judged on the basis of tests that, in some cases, don’t seem to reliably correlate with actual learning or with successful college and career outcomes. When Whitby students are assessed through standardized testing, we gain a valuable metric we can use to check the quality of our curriculum. With exams created and given by an independent organization, standardized test scores are useful because they come from a neutral source and give us data that we can compare to other independent schools across the United States and with other international schools across the globe. Assessment data is also useful for year-over-year internal comparisons. We compare data over a number of years to find trends—and then trace any changes back to their source. If the math scores of our fourth grade students suddenly jump, we want to identify...