Reflective Essay

As a student at St. Paul's School for Boys, I took a few standardized tests that gave both the school and the Association of Independent Maryland Schools (AIMS). In Middle School, I took the ERBs. I remember that they would not tell us what they were for and that we would take an entire day out of the middle of the spring to take them. I also remember that we would get the test scores and my mom would toss them out without really looking at them. Until today, when I looked up the website for the assignment, I had no idea what the ERBs were. According to their website, they are a series of standardized tests in both public and private schools for use as formative assessments (ERBlearn.org 2016). So to this day, I have little assurance that ERB was of any benefit to me.

 The next standardized tests I took were the SAT and ACT. I much preferred the ACT over the SAT when I took them. I liked the fact that there was only one section per subject, rather than returning to a math or reading section again. I did not see the benefit of learning that material for any practical reasons because I had the mentality that I was going to toss that information out as soon as I got into college.

The last sets of standardized testing I took were my EMT and Paramedic Exams when I was working in Baltimore County. Those were an interesting experience for a bunch of reasons. First, I knew that a lot of the information that I was learning could be the difference between life and death (literally) in the back of the ambulance. That was HUGE motivation for me to absorb the material. Second, if I was to earn back-to-back scores below 70, I was out of the program and a job, so I was terrified of bombing a test. There were also critical fail components that, if answered incorrectly, had to be demonstrated to the instructor in a practical setting, which helped to permanently seal that skill or information in my head. To this day, I still remember a large portion of that material because I was so focused on its application beyond the classroom.

The EMT and Paramedic exams gave me the best justification for standardized testing. My certifications were national level, which meant that there needed to be quality control throughout the entire country. The same could be said for schools, that there needs to be a way to gauge a standard nationally. The response to this is a standardized test. According to W. James Popham, standardized testing could have been from the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, to help provide more structured learning for underprivileged communities (2014). The focus the shifted in the No Child Left Behind Act when all students were assessed equally, rather than just the underprivileged. The backlash is that districts often look to teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom when it comes to poor test scores, rather than the students and the curriculum (Black and Wiliam 1998).

Black, P. & William D. (1998, October). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 60(2), 139-148.

Erblearn.org. (2016). Services Retrieved January 31, 2016, from https://www.erblearn.org/services

Popham, W. J. (2014). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.