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Education & Emphasis on Testing

they have a lot of poor students, but if they can show improvements, teachers will receive bonuses. If a school is not performing well, the state will require an improvement plan, send in a state team, and let students transfer to better schools. The staff may be replaced if improvements do not result.

In Atlanta, grades first through 8th prepare for the ITBS during the school day and in special after-school and Saturday programs. The new tests are designed to show what the students have learned through the year, while the ITBS determines how they compare with their peers. Critics of the program worry that so much testing will be detrimental to education since teachers will be driven to prepare students for tests rather than concentrating on educating them. While it is believed that good teachers will continue to use standards given by the CRCT, they will gear their teaching to test materials. However, the governor insists that tests are necessary to compare students to national performance, since there is currently no national test (Cumming, 1999).

The DeKalb school district has placed tremendous effort on improving ITBS scores, and has pushed to emphasize phonics-based reading programs to further this end (Loupe, 1999). To help boost students' reading skills, the school system is moving away from a whole language program, which exposes them to good books, in favor of a system that emphasizes phonics. The district is using the state's phonics-based Reading First program. Teachers and principals have been trained to assess a student's reading ability, were provided with instructional videos, and all county principals had to attend a Reading First training session sponsored by the Georgia Department of Education's Curriculum and Reading Division.

The focus on staff development has also changed. Instead of teachers being able to choose whatever classes they want to take, now in order to take a class, there must be ...

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Education & Emphasis on Testing. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:26, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1694511.html