The Effects of Standardized Testing on Non-Native English Speaking Pre-service Teachers.
Ive said several times that to change our lives we need both to change the way that we think about the world and to change those parts of the world that help make us think that way.
-Philip Slater.
Quite a lot of information has been written on the negative affects of standardized testing on students, one must only type the phrase "standardized testing" into an Internet search and thousands of hits occur. There have been books written on the subject such as, Standardized Minds by Peter Sacks or Alfie Kohn's The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools. Some of the adverse affects of testing can include: lowered expectations of student performance; negative attitudes toward low performing students; lowered self-esteem and expectations by students; inappropriate placement in special education and speech/therapy programs, lowered probability of placement in talented and gifted programs; and increased drop-out rates. {find more examples and citations} Although there seems to be relatively active debates regarding high-stakes standardized testing for students there are less conversations surrounding high-states standardized testing for professions. We are defining high-stakes standardized testing as those exams which have direct consequences for a teacher, students, administrator, and/or district based solely on the numeric score of that exam. These consequences may include: loss of funding for a school, not graduating high school with a diploma, being retained in a grade level until a certain score is attained, financial penalties held against a teacher in order ensure accountability, and not being deemed at highly qualified teacher. .
The focus of this paper is on high-stakes standardized testing in order to receive teacher certification, either provisional or permanent, and more specifically the implications of these tests on non-native English speakers.