Testing and Grading is a Useful Tool for Educators (Essay Sample)

Testing and Grading is a useful tool for educators
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Testing and Grading is a useful tool for educators and it helps children grow up to be good citizens. Some educators have reported that testing and grading is bad for self esteem and should be taken away from learning. Despite various debates, prescription that are meant for best practice however tends to remain elusive. As much as teachers try to come up with policies, the practices tend to vary widely. These variations in grading and testing make different students to develop different skills in different fields. Grading can be said to be a professional judgment on the part of teachers that entails collection and students evaluation on their evidence and understanding (Salend, 2009). Using various information and analysis students’ performance are always converted into marks and thus come up with grades so as to compliment student performance. Grading allows students to compete internally and externally and thus boosts the competition in various schools.
Grading is a very important tool in education and should be a consideration in educational assessment. Grading ignites standard of measurement thus setting a competitive relationship among students who are receiving the grades. Testing and grading needs inherently subjective analysis and judgment. This subjectivity ignites results as most students will have to work hard so as to realize better results. Teachers are able to know students from different dimensions as they are able to weigh them using the given test and grading (Arends, 2008). The fact that grading is subjective, it does not mean that grading lacks the aspect of credibility and is not defensive.
The test and grading has reward values more than punishment values. In most education institutions, it is always a prerequisite for educators to insist on the intrinsic values (Speck, 2009). This makes students to see the value of their hard work and their success being recognized and other weak students will strive harder so as to get rid of the low grades. Testing and grading always protects the self image of students as it is always associated to learning only. From the modern research, it has been known that, direct relationship between aptitude and the achievement of school basically depends on the instructional conditions given in the standard test. The instructions should be matched to the needs of the students so as to make the grading system fair and just to the student (Salend, 2009).
The fairness and equity of the grading system however is still a myth and the grading is done basically on the curve. Students as much as they are relied wholly on the performance of their class work, teachers play a big role in making the students come up with better grades. This is through ensuring that the students get the right content during the class session. It is therefore very important to embrace the testing and grading system. To ensure development of gra...