Assessments play an important role for schools, teachers and in student lives; they collect data for the teacher and measure the students’ knowledge in a specific content area. Assessments can usually be done after a lesson and be in the form of a presentation, portfolio, multiple choice quiz, or group work. Standardized testing happens every year and provides useful information for the education system and for families such as measuring a student’s learning and school performance.
Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) is there to help improve students’ outcome. The four goals are to recruit, support, and retain teachers and principals, to build a foundation of reading and math, to connect high school to career and college, and lastly, to improve low performing schools (TEA, 2017). The ESSA gives Texas Education Agency (TEA) different options on decision making when it comes to accountability, school improvement, teacher quality, and funding back to state and local level. The good thing is that TEA is trying to do their best to come out with a system that support ESSA implementation with the new TEA Strategic Plan. The plan is to lead greater levels of student’s achievement throughout our state (TEA,2017).
During Obama’s presidential years, he announced a testing action plan to restore balance in classroom by ensuring fewer, better, and more fair tests (Every Students Succeeds Act, n. d). The outcome of the Testing Action Plan that U.S Department of Education supports state in the implementation of the (ESSA) in to promote a well-rounded education for every student while ensuring critical protections and equity of opportunity for all students. In agreement with Every Students Succeeds Act, I believe it is a great idea to provide better and fewer tests, but I still strongly believe that a test does not determine your intelligence; testing is not everyone. It is just a test that the schools need to view how much you have learned. According to Every Students Succeeds Act, too much focus has been placed on the testing, educators, and parents. Students have the right to highlight the need for more creativity and innovated learning.
The ESSA also provides several new flexibilities to help states develop innovative approaches to assessments and reduce duplicative and unnecessary testing. There is still much more that I need to learn from assessment, especially accountability. I will provide some videos that could help me better understand this topic of accountability.
References
Every Students Succeeds Acts (n.d.). U.S. Department of Education. https://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/essa/essaassessmentfactsheet1207.pdf
Answers in about a minute: A-F closing the gaps domain. (2018, August 8). YouTube.
Results driven accountability (RDA) 2021 rule proposal overview. (2021, June 23). YouTube. https://youtu.be/7lLyryPR_Sg
TEA. (2017, July 27). Every Student Succeeds Act - State overview. YouTube. https://youtu.be/h_uLySg9o1Y
