Writing is like Gardening

For me writing is like gardening. I go to the store pick out all the flowers you need. Just like looking online or reading books to gather information. When shopping for the flowers I carefully pick out the ones that go together and complement each other.   Adding the flowers to the cart then removing them because I changed my mind. When researching before I start writing, I add sources then remove them and I always have to make sure the information I get goes together.

After a long day at the store finding the perfect flowers I go home and lay them all out where I’m going to plant them. I move them around, putting the prettier flowers in front moving the big ones to the back. This would be just like making your outline for your paper. Deciding what information should come first what is more important and what order it should go in.

Once the flowers are all laid out the hard work begins. I then start to dig the holes and plant the flowers. Everything starts coming together and the hard work starts to pay off. When writing I start feeling successful as my paper becomes closer to being finished.

Finally I plant the last flower. I step back and look at the finish product. It beautiful and it is the best feeling in the world knowing you made that. When finishing up my papers I always look back through to make sure everything is just right. Once the paper is done I feel accomplished and happy it’s over with.

NO MORE TESTS!?

Just kidding there will always those test teachers handout to us, but could we get rid of the government standardized tests, maybe.

THESIS: Standardized testing is not the most accurate way to measure a student's academic abilities or knowledge.

Arguments:
1. Rich vs. Poor
2. School/Teacher vs. School/Teacher
3. Subjects Tested
4.Grading of the tests.

What I still need to find out is more stats on the rich vs. poor and why rich tend to test higher than poor or middle class. I also would like a little bit more on what states test better and why. I want to touch on how the states that pay their teachers more the test scores are higher.

Youtube Video

My video is quite lengthy but provided good information. I liked how they talked about the pros and cons so the video was very much unbiased. They also talked about the other ways to assess a student’s academic abilities. Enjoy!

Summary Portion of Essay #3

Here is my summary portion!

Brief history about standardized testing shows they didn't always exist. The mid-nineteenth century is when these tests were first used. Between World War II and the 1960s standardized test were used just to examine students’ academic progress (Crone). Today the United States not only uses them to examine students but to also judge how good the teachers are doing. Since the students and teachers are now held accountable for these tests they adopted a nickname, high-stake tests (Crone). The No Child Left Behind Act, signed on January 8^th 2002, orders standardized testing in math and reading for students in grades three through eight (Crone). This Act raised the stakes for students and teachers around the country. What Theodore Crone was arguing was “How can we distinguish the schools contribution to these test scores from the effects of students innate abilities, their family social life, economic background, and peers in the classroom (Crone).” Crone argued that standardized tests like the ACT, which have a writing portion, cannot be scored equally. There are thousands of different people that read the writing portion and score off of what they think. When the scored read the test they see the students full information filled out on the test, this brings up issues with a student’s demographic background. Some say that the race of a student could affect their score.  The scoring process for these very important tests that could be the make or break of your admission to college are simply unfair. A major reason to why these tests are so controversial is rich versus poor. How is it fair to compare scores of a student that could afford a private tutor and could afford to retake the test 5 times, to a student that did not receive extra help outside of school and could only afford the free test the school provided once? Money has a lot to do with our public education now and it isn't fair when it comes down to standardized tests. The jobs teachers are doing are also evaluated on the student’s score of standardized tests. Teachers are also brought in the argument of unfair scoring. No teacher teaches the exact same. It’s a proven fact that some teachers are better than others (Crone). When there are lower scores in one state compared to another something should be done.  Crone a professor himself knows that these test are an unfair judgment of a student’s academic abilities.

Essay #3 Topic

I finally decided on the topic of Standardized testing. I chose this topic because I do not think it's fair to judge a students academic capability. Basically I just think standardized testing is over-rated. What I already know about this topic is the wide variety of standardized tests there are. I also know how much money it's costing to distribute these tests every year. What I would like to know more on is what people on the opposite side have to say about standardized testing. I would also like to research the experiments that have been done to see if standardized testing accurately shows a students academic knowledge.

About Me

Hello classmates of mine. Here is a little bit about me.
 I grew up in Milford Michigan with my mom and brother. My brothers name is Nate and he is 20 years old. My brother and I are only 18 months apart. All my life I have enjoyed being active. I love working out and playing sports. I have a boyfriend of 2 years he also is very active. My favortie thing to do is going on a road trip to the U.P. in the summer. Im currently working towards being a RN, but for now I dont work and just focus on school.