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- Title
Required national, regional, and state testing programs.
- Authors
Botzakis, Stergios; Malloy, Jacquelynn
- Abstract
Across respondents in these areas of the world, required tests are generally described as having great influence on the literacy instruction. In China, Japan, Estonia, and Chile, literacy curricula are described as being strongly influenced by the results on required tests, with teachers, schools, and even textbooks adapting strategies to strive for greater student achievement. The test measures are often described as focusing on discrete skills, such as reading comprehension or rote memorization, which may not portray a complete picture of students' literacy. Although relatively nascent compared to other countries, the literacy education programs in Iran seem to be developing along similar lines. Pressures to perform well on required tests are felt on multiple levels, with students often bearing the brunt of demands to perform well. This conclusion especially applies in the case of students attending expensive private schools in Iran and Estonia as well as Japanese exam schools. Teachers in China, Japan, Estonia, and Chile also are reported as being pressured to increase students' performance on required tests. Teaching proficiency is determined in these countries with an eye toward how students do on required exams, and professional advancement seems to sometimes hinge on these results as well. Moreover, test results are frequently the topic of news reports, and the public scrutiny is used to rate administrators as well as school performance. The lone exception to this pressure on teachers appears in responses from Iran, where it seems that teachers are able to operate more autonomously. Clearly, however, required testing is as influential in determining many aspects of literacy instruction in these areas of the world as it is in many other countries and regions.
- Subjects
GED tests; LITERACY; CURRICULUM; ACHIEVEMENT tests; ACADEMIC achievement; LITERACY programs; PRIVATE schools
- Publication
Reading Research Quarterly, 2005, Vol 40, Issue 3, p382
- ISSN
0034-0553
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1598/RRQ.40.3.8