Standardized Tests

I was a proctor for our statewide standardized assessments last week. I've come to the conclusion that students use the same strategies when they have no idea how to solve a problem. What's even scarier is that they use the same strategies when they think they know. I'm realizing that if a student has a word problem that he doesn't understand, then he will just add up all the numbers that appear in the problem. Simple, but wrong. Granted, I was proctoring for the special education students, but I would still hope that they would use certain test strategies.

The students that I had all had time extension. Did any of them use it? No, only on the writing assessment. They finished before the actual time deadline on most of the tests, but they could have used as much time as possible. They had time to use their calculators, draw pictures to solve math problems, and really check over their work. But they didn't use it. It was very frustrating and demoralizing, because I wanted to help them, but I couldn't. It was really draining to see wrong answers, wrong strategies, and what seemed to be complete cluelessness about the whole process.

BBC