Standardized testing, and the effects it has on student-centered learning.

Various studies evaluated in our literature review shows that standardized testing can have both positive and negative effects on instruction.  The research shows that the nature of these tests generally produces anxiety in students, parents, and educators. As a result of these high stakes tests, many teachers feel pressured into modifying their intended curriculum to fit the content covered in the test. When this occurs, teachers are less likely to allow for a student-centered classroom. Although this is a prevalent issue in many school districts, faculty/administrators who work collaboratively to develop a student-centered culture typically are successful at managing both. Through the establishment of a student-centered culture, teachers are shown to be more successful during test time than those who do not have such a culture established.  

Find out more information on student-centered learning by clicking here. 

Policies and Procedures. How do they affect student-centered learning?

Policies and Procedures are created by districts to assist administration, teachers, and students to function accordingly to guidelines. They ensure that all the school systems function operate fairly, equally, and within legal limits.  But since every school, program, teacher, student, and learning style are different; these "one size fits all" policies and procedures implemented at the federal, state, and district level have often time been a road block for the development of a student-centered system. Since many of these polices and procedures were designed to help the school system as a whole, the establishment of workarounds, exceptions, and changes to policies must be made available with the goal of finding solutions to these "one size fits all" policies.  

In the article "Policy Barriers to School Improvement: What's Real and What's Imagined" by Lawrence Miller and Jane Lee, they interviewed eight principals from the three state of New Hampshire, Maryland, and Connecticut on what they think are policy barriers in attempting to provide more personalized learning experience.  With the answers provided by the eight principals, Miller and Lee categorized the barriers as imagined and real.  With imagined being barriers which can be overcome with workarounds and working with administrations and policy makers for improvements.  While real barriers are policies that are written into laws or are part of unions and labor agreement.  Figure 1 below is from page 3 of Miller and Lee's "Policy barriers to school improvement: What’s real and what’s imagine?" .

Miller, L.J., & Lee, J.S. (2014). Policy barriers to school improvement: What’s real and what’s imagine?. Center on Reinventing Public Education, pg.3.

At the state level, state that have policies that are more friendly toward autonomy and innovation have less real barriers.

Figure 2 below is from page 7 of Miller and Lee's "Policy barriers to school improvement: What’s real and what’s imagine?" .

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