Thursday's In-Class Writing

This issue I'm going to be writing about is school assessment. I think I'm going to focus on the tests schools are giving now like Gateway, instead of focusing on Memphis city schools like I mentioned in class. I think the Gateway test and TCAP are ridiculous. For instance the gateway tests, you take the test and if you fail the testy ou have to take another semester of that course and take the test over again. It does not matter if you are passing the course or not. I took TCAP in elementary school and I think middle. I honestly don't understand why they give us the test. It doesn't even matter if you pass it or not you will still advance to the next grade. In fact, some teachers could careless about these kind of tests and that's not a good thing either. Another test I don't get is the creative writing essay we did in high school. Where the scores you could get were between a 1 and 6. Well the government gives you some random topic the day of the writing assessment and you don't know what it is until you flip the paper over and read it. The essay is timed as well. The thing I don't like about this is that it gets sent away and there are judges who read your paper. This is pointless because it is that persons opinion on what they think you should get. They could give you failing score, which means you would have to take it over again until you pass, or someone else could read it and give you a passing score. I'm planning on being a teacher when I graduate from school, so I want to look into this subject matter and figure out why they give these certain tests.