As an educator, I have experienced multiple types/ forms of assessments for various things dealing with school-aged children. Personally, I have been involved in TAKS, STAAR, EOC, SAT, ACT, and the THEA. All of the assessments listed tested only content area subjects such as Social Sciences, Sciences, Math, and English, but there are sooooo many more areas that deal with life and knowledge needed to be successful. All of assessments are extremely narrow and only allow a specific quota to pass before desiring an "upgrade". The upgrades consist of more iformation, more topics, and darstically cut down time limits.I have high school students that have failed their TAKS test as freshmen, sophomores, and juniors; and have to now take all three groups of test as seniors to graduate. These requirements are extremely unrealistic and undoubtedly stressful for these children. Once a school/students get "good" or start to go over the passable qouta, all of a sudden there's a new test put in place, the STAAR.
When I studied abroad in China in 2009, I was able to visit multiple schools in various Proviences. The over all idea of education was that it was extremely important, but only for certain people living in specific income status levels. With millions of people being born and living in China, there was only around 25% attending an academic based school, the others were in factories, on the streets, or attending a performing arts school. The ones that were able to attend an academic based school, were required by the government to take assessments to see what type of school they would attend such as Math, Science, Tourism... This assessment of placement was giving to 3rd graders! Image being in 3rd grade and taking a test that decides what college you will attend and what career you will have; and I thought the GRE was stressful!!
Overall I feel assessments are need to see only where the child stands academically and knowledgably, but not to decide if they graduate or get into a specfic career. Students should be judged on their growth, not be compared to the development of the national average or what others think they should know. We have learned in our Early Childhood Development course this semester, that everyone grows, develops, and learns differently and at different rates, therefore I feel that we should have unique assessments to go along with our unique development and learning.
