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Graduation Tests: States Require School Curriculums to Show Results Through Testing
This year the Ohio Graduation Test will have its first profound impact on graduating seniors in Ohio's school districts. For the first time, high school students who do not pass the test will not be conferred a diploma, ending the long standing, "you can catch-up in college" mentality.
To be sure, the remedial course designations at Ohio's colleges and universities will continue to meet the need of the roughly 65% of high school students who choose to attend post secondary education, but for those who simply need the high school sheep skin, it has just become much harder to receive.
The Ohio Achievement Test or Graduation Test as it has become known, will have a marked impact on the way Ohio teachers and students structure the critical years before high school commencement. For a numbers of years, high school teachers have voiced concern that they have had to alter their teaching style and eliminate numerous real life courses in favor of only those topics that may appear on the Ohio Graduation Test or OGT. To be fair, OGT's new requirements have changed the face of education in Ohio and many parents and teachers would argue that it has for the better.
While the rest of the world has moved forward in establishing education standards, the United States has lagged behind, preferring to allow local school districts to personalize their education and determine which critical areas must have the most focus. With the advent of No Child Left Behind and State and National Standards, the Ohio Graduation Test has become the critical harbinger in determining what has been taught and what has been learned in Ohio's high schools.
Critics would put forward that these new standards represent the homogenization of education, while proponents argue that there finally is a consistent set of standards within which American children are required to achieve.
How then is the most efficient way to study for success?
This critical question is answered where 90% of Americans now seek information, the Internet. And many entities have tried and failed to create a comprehensive online practice test solution.
While the debate is likely to continue for years to come, the students of 2006 are faced with a very real problem. How do they study for and pass a test that determines their future success, and indeed if they see Miss Pritchet in English again next year or walk the quad at college thinking of a major.
There are paper study guides sold on Amazon, including one popular guide published by Barron's. and several independent companies offer ebooks, where a student must download a PDF file and print out pages.
MaxSkill offers OGT practice Software on CD available for Windows computers.
Paper Books are not interactive. While eBooks offer the immediate gratification of receiving a product immediately through a download, eBooks are often padded artificially by publishers so as to increase the page length of the ebook. This means a busy student must use extra inkjet ink or pay extra printout charges at Kinko's for pages that are unneeded.
Online practice tools are both interactive and available immediately to busy students. There are two main online practice tools for the OGT. IQ-ity.com and StudyIsland.
Many education entities have tried, with little success, to create a practice test that enables students at every level to work throughout the school year and achieve their potential when the actual test is attempted. Unfortunately, few in this area have succeeded save two or three.
Among this group of highly specialized companies one shines above the rest. It is the only entity that has been actually reviewed by those Ohio educators who consulted with the Ohio Department of Education on the creation of the actual OGT test.
The team at IQ-ity has created the only online practice test specifically designed for Ohio students by Ohio educators with years of experience in online education. It is the only scientific and intelligence-based test for educational assessment, and it aligns with state benchmarks and grade level indicators.
Student's lives today revolve around the internet. They enjoy socializing and working online. Colleges and Universities are capitalizing on this trend by offering more courses online and the IQ-ity Ohio Graduation Practice Test is an extension of what awaits Ohio's future scholars.
In a review of all the available practice options for high school students, the IQ-ity Ohio Graduation Practice Test is found to be the most advanced self-paced test that delivers the results for which every student and their families strive. This practice test is available to every school district in Ohio and every private or parochial school to begin practicing for success.
About the Author: Susan Bond is a part of IQ-ity.com, provider of comprehensive interactive practice test solutions for the Ohio Graduation Test for school districts, parents and high school students. IQ-ity also specializes in comprehensive Learning Management Systems for curriculum directors searching for the best LMS solution for their school district.
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