Elementary school students improve when they receive praise for the work they have done well and when they receive constructive criticism for areas to improve.   When students begin to learn they gain confidence that they can handle harder material.  In writing, when students learn how to revise their work, they make great strides to becoming better writers.  While standardized curriculums do ensure that all schools cover all the basic topics, they limit creativity of the students and often lead to a little knowledge about many subjects instead of comprehensive understanding of fewer topics.  Along with standardized curriculums, performance testing limits students by not providing parents, teachers, or students with effective feedback on a child’s improvement.  The use of performance tests as means to evaluate a student’s writing ability should be discouraged in elementary schools.  
      Standardized curriculums that include performance testing often push teachers to move through a great deal of material at a fast pace.  Teachers often feel pushed for time and can never seem to fit in everything they need to cover.  Amy Dickinson and Hilary Hylton of Time magazine report that, “Standardized curriculum and testing in primary schools are causing what educators call “push down” academics” (1).   As a result the pressure to achieve high scores on tests starts as early as kindergarten.  The theory is the more a student learns in kindergarten the more they can learn in first-grade and so on.  This type of thinking often leads to students spending less time on social skills and interacting in the classroom with building blocks and dress-up clothes, and more time sitting still, listening to the teacher quizzing on the basics.  Teachers and childhood-development experts worry about this problem, and kindergarten teachers across the nation complain that, “our kids need more play, rather than less, and our curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep” (Dickinson 2).  Without a standardized curriculum teachers can move at a more reasonable pace and give students time to fully understand a certain language art skill before they move on to a subject that might build on the first skill.  
     Along with standardized curriculums, standardized tests in language arts do not benefit the student.  Writing ability assessments often just give scores that access certain skills pertaining to a student’s writing sample.  For students that sit at the borderline of failure, these scores just remind them that they are not as smart as their peers.  In addition, it adds to a child’s “secret suspicion” that they are not able to learn (Townsend 1).  When students have this feeling of self-doubt they often lose motivation to learn and give up before trying.
     Not only do standardized tests lead to self-defeat, they do little to help a student improve.  The principal of Parkview Elementary in Chula, California, Dr. Sandra Edwin has found in her experience that conventional standardized test have many limitations.  She feels that tests do not provide effective feedback that can lead to improvement in a student’s work (T H E Journal 1).  Scores on writing performance tests just compare students with other students their age.  These scores often are expressed as raw scores and percentages that mean nothing to parents and tell nothing of a child’s improvement.   Also, tests tend to be graded weeks or months after being given.  By the time the scores are published students, teachers, and parents have forgotten about the test.  These scores focus on the product of writing instead of the process.  Studies have been done that show that most teachers focus on the “process of writing” because the mastery of that will help students to become better writers (Daniels 2).  If the standardized curriculum focuses on teaching writing for the assessment test, then the mastery of the writing process is often lost because the test does not score based on the process a student goes through to write.  
     Defenders of standardized testing argue that assessment tests provide feedback on students across the country.  These test hold schools and teachers accountable by making sure they are teaching what the curriculum dictates.  While in writing this ensures that student cover many types of writing (explanatory, persuasive, analytic, etc.) many teachers have found that their students’ writing starts to conform to state’s rubric (Strickland 2).  Their work loses much of its originality and creativeness, and students become much more bored with writing.  In addition, assessment test do not always accurately portray a student’s ability.  Twenty-percent of elementary school children suffer from an extreme fear of performing poorly on tests, referred to as test anxiety (Beidel 2).  Students with such a fear do not perform to their ability on standardized tests. 
     Educators must find another way to assess pupils’ writing besides the traditional standardized tests.  For writing assessment to be useful, opportunities for revision are essential because the struggling to restructure one’s own words leads to a deeper understanding that can improve a student’s work.  Opportunities for revision allow for a student to gain control of the personal writing process and set personal goals for their future work.  When a student makes revision decisions about their work they gain control over their work, which increases their self-confidence (Townsend 3).   Writing assessment helps students improve when it allows for them to evaluate their own work and standardized writing tests do not do this.  
     Writing portfolios can effectively assess students’ writing with the opportunities for students to monitor their work and see their improvement.  Students choose selections of their writing to include in the portfolio and then they assess their own work comparing earlier work with more recent selections.  Teachers should act as coaches instead of judges by helping their pupils to see their work “as fluid, as able to change, not etched in concrete, evaluated as either good or bad with no opportunity for revision” (Townsend 2).  Portfolios focus on each individual student’s progress and the positive trends in their writing instead of the negative ones.  They also can provide the parent with clear evidence of his or her child’s progress over time.  Parents, teachers, and students can easily monitor a student’s progress in writing through portfolios.  For struggling students, it gives them confidence that they can improve which can help motivate them to become even better writers.  For advanced students, instead of just presenting high scores, it gives them things to work on for further improvement.  Portfolios give opportunities for positive feedback to students by showing improvement, yet they also challenge students of all levels to continue that improvement.  
     Portfolios may not provide comparisons of students on a national level, but why are these comparisons so important?  Writing is such an individually creative process that educators should not force one style or method.  Instead of teaching students to be conformists, teachers should encourage individuality and creativity—true measures of good writing.  Portfolios encourage personal improvement and that is  more important than comparison across a national level.  
    In the early years of a child’s education, it is critical that he or she have the confidence to tackle challenging assignments.  Standardized curriculum and performance assessment tests often do not give students the confidence that will lead to self-motivation to learn more.  By teaching the writing process and using writing portfolios as means of assessment, young students will excel greatly in language arts.  
 
Works Cited

“Assessment Tests Provide Feedback for Elementary Teachers and Parents.” T H E Journal. Vol. 21, Issue 9. April 1994. http://ehostvgw10.epnet.com/delivery.asp. (15 April 2002).

Beidel, Deborah C. and Turner, Samuel M. “Teaching Study Skills and Test-Taking Strategies to Elementary School Students.” Behavior Modification. Vol. 23 Issue 4. Oct. 1999. http://ehostvgw10.epnet/delivery.asp. (15 April 2002). 

Daniels, Patricia, Mosenthal, James, and Lipson, Marjorie J. “Process Writing in the Classrooms of Eleven Fifth-Grade Teachers with Different Orientations to Teaching and Learning.” The Elementary School Journal. Ed. Haley Woodside-Jiron. Volume 101, Number 2.  Chicago:  The Chicago University Press, 2000. 

Dickinson, Amy and Hylton, Hilary.  “Kinder Grind.” Time. Vol. 154, Issue 19. 11 Nov. 1999. http://ehostvgw10.epnet.com/delivery.asp. (15 April 2002).

Strickland, Dorothy S. “Teaching Writing in a Time of Reform.” The ElementarySchool Journal. Ed. Haley Woodside-Jiron. Volume 101, Number 4. Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 2000.  

Townsend, Jane S. “Writing Assessment:  Multiple Perspectives, Multiple Purposes.” Preventing School Failure. Vol. 41, Issue 2. 1997. http://web4.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw. (15 April 2002).