ABSTRACT
Like everyone else, teachers have different personal viewpoints on standardized testing. First of all, the teachers must move away from debating the merits of standardized testing. Strongly held personal beliefs tend to dominate that debate. Teachers must shift our focus away from beliefs and center on behaviors. Standardized tests measure only a part of what schools should be doing. Effective teachers focus on the behaviors that lead to success, not the beliefs that stand in the way of it. Effective teachers don’t let standardized tests take over the entire class. However, the teachers and principals in the more effective schools in the study described student achievement in a much broader sense than did educators whose schools underachieved on standardized tests.
