gymslip boas: Short Paper 6: Annotated Bibliography

Ashley Carrithers

English 102

April 4th, 2012

Mr. Wiles

Annotated Bibliography

??????????? The issue I am trying to get across is whether standardized testing in schools today is an effective way to assess students? knowledge.? I believe that this is not an effective way to test how smart one is for many reasons which I plan to go into depth with later in my paper.? Being an education major, this is important towards my future because I will be required to present standardized testing to my students by the school board and by the state.? The students are hugely at stake here because they are the ones being judged on their performance on a test that could possibly decide their whole future, such as the ACT.?

??????????? So far in my research it is surprising to find that almost all the articles I found were against standardized testing and pointing out the flaws and cons in it.? It was actually very difficult to find articles supporting standardized testing and explaining why they should be used in schools.? This made my research fairly simple, only I need to find reasons for both sides of the argument for my article.? Also, it was hard to find facts and data supporting my argument, and to know if they were truly reliable sources.

??????????????? To go about writing this paper, I will first address both viewpoints of the argument and give vague reasons to back them up.? After that, I will go into further detail about the side that I am on (against standardized testing) and give additional explanation as to why I believe this.? I will do this by using excerpts from the sources I found below and incorporating them into my paper.? One thing that I was hoping to discover during my research was some kind of experiment that proves that one can be very smart and still know all the information, while still not doing well on the test.? However, I did not seem to find any experiments like this.?

Popham, W. James. ?Why Standardized Tests Don?t Measure Educational Quality.? Educational Leadership. ASCD, n.d. Web. 4 Apr 2013. <http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar99/vol56/num06/Why-Standardized-Tests-Don?t-Measure-Educational-Quality.asp&xgt;.

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??????????? This article is written by W. James Popham, who is a UCLA Emeritus Professor.? He writes about the conflict of standardized testing, and explains why these tests do not measure the knowledge of a student or how well of a teacher one is.? Although Popham discusses the how standardized testing does not assess a student?s ability, he mainly focuses on the educators themselves and how just because their students receive high scores on standardized tests does not mean that they are a better teacher than the ones whose students did not perform as well.? This is a well-structured article that I believe will assist in persuading my audience that standardized tests is not effective.? Popham also helped me look at it from a different angle; before I was only focused on the student?s performance, while this article focuses on the views of the educators from standardized testing.? While he does not have any statistical proof, experiments, or data, he comes up with many good and well-educated reasons to back up his viewpoint. ?Therefore, this article will be applicable to my paper as well.? This will benefit my paper because his reasons made me think deeper about the issue, and I can also use them in my own paper.? Popham and I have the same viewpoints, and he is also a valid person to quote from because he is a professor at UCLA.? I plan to quote him while attempting to persuade my resistance audience.?

?Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America?.? Standardized Tests. ProCon, 22 Mar 2013. Web. 4 Apr 2013. <http://standardizedtests.procon.org/

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??????????? This article is from ProCon.org which is a nonpartisan, nonprofit website that presents facts, studies, and con statements related to standardized tests.? It explores both the pros and the cons of standardized testing.? Therefore, this article does not have one central claim, but points out how effective standardized tests can be and also how ineffective they can be.? This article was very efficient in its writing and showing both sides of this issue.? This article may not have had one main author who is credible, but it includes many quotes and actual data from credible sources such as the National Research Council and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that will help my central claim.? It gives good examples of research done on the history of standardized testing.? From reading through the article and the points that were being made, they are very relevant to my argument.? This will benefit me because it shows me the pros to standardized testing, which I will need for my paper so that I too can illustrate both viewpoints.? Another way I can use this article in my paper is to take advantage of the resources they give me and the hard data that gives examples from the past of how standardized testing can be ineffective.?

Sadker, David, and Karen Zittleman. ?Test Problems: Seven Reasons Why Standardized Tests Are Not Working .? education.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Apr 2013. <http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Test_Problems_Seven/?page=2>.

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??????????? This article takes the approach of the main reasons of why standardized tests do not work, therefore, the claim of the authors is that they are against standardized testing and believe that they are ineffective.? Sadker and Zittleman have both obtained PhDs and are published by McGraw-Hill Higher Education who publishes instructional materials targeted at the higher education market, including texts, lab manuals, study guides, testing materials, software and multimedia products.? All of this information leads me to believe that this is a credible source and these are credible people.? This article was very insightful to me and was not confusing at all.? They made many good points added in with credible evidence to back up the point that they are making.? The authors are very well-educated and know what they are talking about, making this not only very credible but also relevant to my research. This will also be very useful and beneficial in my paper so that I can point out the specific flaws in standardized testing.? This will also work as a compromise with my resistance audience, because I can point out that standardized testing could work if these particular problems could be ironed out.?

Dawer, Daniel. ?Standardized Testing is Completely Out of Control.? Policymic. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Apr 2013. <http://www.policymic.com/articles/21555/standardized-testing-is-completely-out-of-control>.

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??????????? ?In this article, Dawer wastes no time laying down his beliefs that standardized testing is a plain waste of time.? He goes on to discuss different examples from different states and the amount of time they spend each year sitting at a desk taking standardized tests.? He also goes on to discuss his other reasoning of why they are not effective.? I thought this article to be one of the most insightful, maybe because the author seemed passionate about what he was writing so his reasons were more believable.? He used different sources that were reliable, and collected data and statistics to back it up.? Consequently, this article was both accurate and relevant.? It will benefit me in my own writing because I hope to have my reasoning sound as believable as his did.? I also plan to use different quotes and excerpts from Dawer?s article since his information and facts were so valid.?

Fletcher, Dan. ?Standardized Testing.? Time U.S. Time, 11 Dec 2009. Web. 5 Apr 2013. <http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1947019,00.html>.

Flanagan, Dawn, Jennifer Mascolo, and Steven Hardy-Braz. ?Standardized Testing.? Education.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Apr 2013. <http://www.education.com/reference/article/standardized-testing/>.