Teaching to the Test
Since this kind of teaching to the test leads primarily to improved test-taking skills, increases in test scores do not necessarily mean improvement in real academic performance.
When students are given a test, teachers often know beforehand what is going to be on that test or they have some kind of general idea of the concepts to be covered.  They obviously want their students to do well, so they spend a lot of time covering those topics that are on the test.  This is called "teaching to the test".  This isn't so bad, but becomes a problem when teachers are forced to discard other topics they had planned on covering in order to spend more time on the concepts they know will be on the test.  There is so much accountability for low test scores that teachers do everything in their power to raise them.  They drill students on what they will be tested on and they go beyond the curriuculm only to teach test-taking skills (Burley), or what is called "testwiseness".  When the curriculum is narrowed in such a fashion, students obviously lose out on a rich and full education.
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Garrett Bentley »Garrett Bentley
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Teaching to the Test
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