TOPIC 1 Managing self disclosureImage source Americaexplai.docx

TOPIC 1: Managing self disclosure
Image source: Americaexplained.wordpress.com
Managing Self-Disclosure: How Much is Too Much? Posted
by Anni M.
In the field of interpersonal communication, self-disclosure is
used as a measure for relationship development. The standard
relationship progresses as follows: I tell you something about
myself, you tell me something about yourself at a similar level
of intimacy. As two people get to know each other better, the
information they share becomes more personal. Eventually, it
becomes comfortable to share secret information, or information
that reveals insecurities, fears, or faults. But this type of self-
disclosure takes time. It requires trust on both sides. Often,
self-disclosure happens too quickly or not at all. In these
circumstances communication breaks down and the relationship
stops developing normally. In business, self-disclosure is an
important tool for building trust but too much of it is
unprofessional and can damage relationships.
Business relationships are, of necessity, separate from personal
relationships. Sometimes this is a blurry line. Friendships
develop in the office that lead to excessive self-disclosure and
that can present professional problems. But if a friendship is
comfortable and strong, it is possible to balance intimacy and
professionalism. The real problems arise when one person
rushes to disclose to another, or never discloses, closing himself
off. We’ll explore each scenario, though the former is more
common. As a recent study at Harvard has shown, our brains
reward us for self-disclosure.
Imagine that two people are talking, a boss and his employee.
They don’t know each other well, in fact the employee just
started working for the company a month earlier. The boss is

distraught and starts talking about his failing marriage. The
employee cowers. What can he do? He tries to be supportive,
but he isn’t a friend. He offers his sympathies but he feels
uncomfortable. In this case, the boss’ disclosure has damaged
his relationship with his employee. The employee feels nervous
about talking with the boss and is confused about the
boundaries between them. In this case the boss should
remember, less is more.
Imagine that two people are talking, two employees of equal
standing in the company. They’ve known each other for several
years and work closely together every day. On multiple
occasions, employee one has tried to get to know employee two
on a personal level. He has talked about his favorite hobbies,
his family, and the sports teams he likes, but employee two
hasn’t shared any personal information. Employee one feels that
employee two is distant and closed off. He doesn’t trust
employee two.
The lesson here is that self-disclosure has to be natural, and it
has to be a two-way street. Both parties must disclose at equal
levels for the relationship to progress in a healthy, comfortable
way. If you struggle with self-disclosure at work, start to pay
closer attention to the information your co-workers share. Don’t
share more than they do, but let them in. You don’t have to
reveal your deepest darkest secrets, but it’s always a good idea
to share something about yourself. Building trust means trusting
others with information. Like most aspects of healthy
interpersonal communication in business, it’s a give and take.
http://www.victorialabalme.com/communication_and_presentati
on_skills/?p=177
Running head: STANDARDIZED TESTS SECTIONS I AND II
1
STANDARDIZED TESTS SECTIONS I AND II 7

Standardized Tests Sections I and II
Sammy North
DeVry University
Standardized Tests Sections I and II
Brittany, an honors student in Atlanta, Georgia, had
worked hard her entire academic career to celebrate what would
be her proudest moment in high school: commencement. She
wanted to walk across the stage to the flash of cameras and the
smiles of her family just like her classmates, and then journey
off to a college in South Carolina where she had already been
accepted. So she gathered her proud family members from
Chicago and Washington, D.C., to come to share in her joy.
Brittany watched as her classmates put on their caps and gowns
and walked across the stage to receive their diplomas. But she
did not, and instead waited all during the day to get a last-
minute waiver signed. She continued to wait through the night,
but it never came. She began to realize that if she graduated, it
would not be quick or easy. Her problem was that she had not
passed one of four subject areas in the state’s graduation test,
which students must pass to earn a regular diploma. She is not
alone. Thousands of students, such as Brittany, every year do
not make it across the stage at graduation due to failing these
state tests. And many of them, such as Brittany, were honors
students who had fulfilled all the other requirements of
graduation except this one (Torres, 2010).
Stories such as this one are far too common and should not
happen. We have the power to change the status quo, so that no
student should have to follow the same path as Brittany. This
problem can be solved, though like Brittany’s case, it will be
neither quick nor easy.
Everyone is affected by the strength of our educational system,

from the students themselves and their ability to succeed in
college and in the workplace, to the employers who hire them—
and everyone in between. Every taxpayer is a stakeholder in
education, because these tests are paid for by tax dollars, and
the return on investment in education is not where it should be.
Standardized tests should be abolished and replaced with end-
of-year subject tests because they will save time and money,
lead to increased mastery of core subjects, and diminish dropout
rates.
This problem resulted on the one hand from national concern
with global competition. When Sputnik rose into the sky in
1957 and Americans were concerned that the Russians were
outgunning us in the Space Race, millions of dollars were
poured into math and science programs to bolster teaching and
resultant learning in these subjects. The 1965 Elementary and
Secondary Education Act helped to fund these efforts.
Confidence in our educational system was renewed when
Americans set foot on the moon in 1969, but by 1983, it had
eroded. Its quality so alarmed the government that its 1983
report, A Nation at Risk, warned that a “rising tide of
mediocrity” would undermine this country’s place in the
competitive 20th century (as cited in Zhao, 2006, p. 28). By
2001, the Bush administration authorized the No Child Left
Behind (NCLB) Act, which began in 2002 and runs parallel in
thinking and intent to the Race to the Top (RTT) initiative,
started under the Obama administration in 2009. NCLB
mandated high-stakes tests for all states, and imposed a carrots-
and-sticks strategy of rewards and punishments if test scores
were not consistently high. The thinking is that students and
teachers will work and learn more if there are serious rewards
or punishments; teachers get financial rewards and schools are
lauded by the media if they do well, but teachers face
termination, schools face closures, and students are retained or
not allowed to graduate if they do poorly (Nichols, Glass, &
Berliner, 2012). Furthermore, it is thought that tests help
produce a world-class education by encouraging students to

reach their full potential, improving our collective productivity,
and reestablishing our competitiveness on a global scale
(Madaus & Russell, 2010).
Another cause of the problem is that these tests are poorly
designed and don’t measure what they should. The NCLB
legislation from the Bush administration promised that all
children would be held to the same high standards in core
subjects such as math and reading, and school districts would
get funding from the government to force children to take these
tests; if schools did poorly, they would be slapped with
improvement plans and further sanctions if they failed to show
annual progress. Schools should be held accountable to—and
raise expectations and standards for—all students, and the
resultant improvement would benefit everyone. So it’s logical to
conclude that these tests, after being in place since 2002, would
improve math and reading test scores, certainly allowing fewer
students into remedial college courses. If these tests improved
complex skills in math and reading, students would not have to
take remediation courses in college at the same rates, but this is
not the case, according to Ravitch (2011): improved scores on
standardized tests do not translate into the kind of proficiency
needed even for first-year college courses. Students are still
taking remedial college courses in large numbers and at
staggering costs to states that must shoulder the burden.
Standardized tests will continue to decrease the class time spent
on history and science and increase the number of skilled test-
takers who aren’t any better at math and reading, despite No
Child Behind legislation and its promise of improvement
through standardized tests (Ravitch, 2011).
One effect is a vicious cycle that is counterproductive to the
mission of NCLB and RTT: schools compete for funding based
on students’ scores, and those with low-scoring students are not
just penalized; they don’t receive the needed funding, which in
turn leads teachers to have fewer resources left to teach with.
So their students are less likely to score well. These initiatives
are aimed at improvement through high standards, great

expectations, and accountability, yet real improvement has not
been borne out in the literature. On the contrary, students’
motivation and teachers’ instructional methods have been
negatively affected by these tests, with negative connections
found between these tests and student achievement and
graduation rates (Nichols, Glass, & Berliner, 2012). The
National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) has shown
little improvement in the years under NCLB (Ravitch, 2011).
Nichols, Glass, and Berliner’s (2012) study about the NAEP test
scores in reading and math pre- and post-NCLB concluded that
students were making greater gains in math before NCLB
legislation than after it; reading achievement has been
unchanged pre- and post-NCLB. Scores from the two college
entrance exams, the SAT and ACT, actually declined from 2006
to 2010 (as cited in Onosko, 2011), so skills needed to enter
higher education have not improved despite standardized testing
programs. Our poor showing compared to other developed
nations continues unabated. The Program for International
Student Achievement (PISA) compares 15-year-olds from 65
countries: we rated 10th in reading, 18th in math and 13th in
science, with schools that enjoy autonomy regarding assessment
scoring higher (as cited in Mathis, 2011). Of course, many
factors account for differences in scores between nations
(socioeconomic differences, language barriers, etc.), but this is
still no excuse.
Another effect is the performance gap regarding socioeconomic
factors. One premise of NCLB legislation was that our
educational system was at fault for the low achievement levels
of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. If teachers
and administrators at schools in poor neighborhoods did a better
job, then students from these areas would excel and not become
“left behind” their more advantaged peers. This has yet to occur
to the extent the NCLB wished for. The narrowing of the
achievement gap between higher and lower income groups has
not occurred according to some studies (as cited in Nichols,
Glass, & Berliner, 2012) or is narrowing but at a very slow rate

(Nichols, Glass, & Berliner, 2012). Berliner (2010) argues that
inadequate healthcare, insufficient nutrition, lead poisoning, air
pollution, domestic violence, and crime are outside factors
among poor children that have more to do with school
achievement than teachers or administrators. Yet these factors
are not accounted for in the current system of standardized
testing, and students and schools are being left further behind.
Schools with at-risk students become institutions for test takers.
Stress caused by standardized testing results in less time for
children to play, sleep, and interact with their parents (as cited
in Clemmitt, 2007), so everyday social interaction and family
cohesiveness are threatened by this kind of testing. But it gets
worse: very often, what happens in the classroom is directly
aligned to state tests.
Students and teachers have learned that their jobs and futures
are tied to how well they do on these tests, so the tests are taken
very seriously. This effect, teaching to the test, is pervasive;
teachers essentially teach only what is tested, often to the
exclusion of anything else (Hillocks, 2002; McNeil &
Valenzuela, 2001). Many subjects such as history or the arts are
de-emphasized; more importantly, skills that are critical to
students’ success in college—research skills and lab
experiments—are not taught. So the more that tests emphasize
test taking, the less they emphasize skills necessary for college,
and the more they leave students unprepared for the rigor and
challenge of college. In many schools, test preparation is the
curriculum (Menken, 2006) and also what is valued in its
content. For example, in writing, the tests influence what is
valued in the instruction of writing and what is encouraged in
student thinking, a kind of formulaic writing or “organized
blether” (Hillocks, 2002, p. 80). Tests are teaching students
very negative ideas about writing: one-hour timed writing on
the five-paragraph theme forces students to make “safe” choices
since drafting and revising are not practiced. Writing tests don’t
require students to examine their work for consistency,
relevance, or impact; it promotes a way of thinking that

removes the necessity of critical thought (Hillocks, 2002). Thus
many classroom hours are spent practicing writing that does not
promote the kind of critical literacy valued in higher education
or the workplace. The tests drain students of higher-order
thinking skills, and are not teaching them to become “creative,
critical and curious learners” (as cited in Koch, 2000, “Current
Situation,” para. 4).
One more by-product of this testing craze is that students feel
disenfranchised from school and simply drop out. Standardized
tests have not improved or, according to recent studies, have
even exacerbated the high school dropout rate (as cited in
Nichols, Glass, & Berliner, 2012). High school dropouts are far
more likely to be unemployed compared to college graduates,
and are much more likely to end up incarcerated and to get
public assistance compared to their counterparts who graduated
from high school (as cited in National Dropout Prevention
Center/Network, 2010). So the indirect costs just of dropouts,
let alone public assistance and correctional facilities, are
overwhelming our government at a time when it can least afford
it. The indirect effects of funding standardized testing are
staggering, considering that these government programs are
funded through taxpayer dollars. Race to the Top’s bill has been
tagged at $4.35 billion (as cited in Onosko, 2011), not to
mention the huge investments in time and energy that all
stakeholders must invest in competing for this money. A
solution is not only desirable; it’s unconscionable not to
consider.
Figure 1: No Child Left Behind Act Being Signed into Law,
2002
Figure 1: President George W. Bush is flanked by members of
Congress and students when he signs the No Child Left Behind
Act into law in 2002. Source: Save Education (and GOP
Consistency): Dump No Child Left Behind (2010).
As shown in Figure 1, NCLB was signed into law in 2002, and
the image above reflects the good intentions that this initiative

engendered: the president and smiling members of Congress,
including Edward M. Kennedy, a Democrat, and John Boehner,
a Republican, along with children in front of the American flag.
Despite their best intentions, these tests have not fulfilled the
promise of raising the quality of education in our schools, and
have instead left a trail of broken promises, high school
dropouts, and no substantial returns on investment. As a result
of standardized tests, our children have been left behind and are
falling to the bottom of the heap!
References
Adelman, C. (1999). Answers in the tool box: Academic
intensity, attendance patterns, and bachelor’s degree attainment.
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of
Educational Research and Improvement.
Albertson, K., & Marwitz, M. (2001). The silent scream:
Students negotiating timed writing assessment. Teaching
English in a Two Year College, 29(2), 144–153.
Berliner, D. C. (2010). Are teachers responsible for low
achievement by poor students? Education Digest, 75(7), 4.
Retrieved from http://www.eddigest.com/
Bridgeland, J., DiIulio, J., & Morison, K. (2006). The silent
epidemic: Perspectives of high school dropouts. Retrieved from
http://www.civicenterprises.net/pdfs/thesilentepidemic3-06.pdf
Clemmitt, M. (2007, July 13). Students under stress. CQ
Researcher, 17, 577-600. Retrieved from
http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/
Hillocks, G. (2002). The testing trap: How state writing
assessments control learning. New York, NY: Teachers College
Press.
Jost, K. (2010, April 16). Revising no child left behind. CQ
Researcher, 20, 337–360. Retrieved from
Koch, K. (2000, September 22). Cheating in schools. CQ
Researcher, 10, 745–768. Retrieved from

Madaus, G., & Russell, M. (2010). Paradoxes of high-stakes
testing. Journal of Education, 190(1/2), 21–30. Retrieved from
http://www.bu.edu/journalofeducation/
Mathis, W. J. (2011). International test scores, educational
policy, and the American dream. Encounter, 24(1), 31–33.
Retrieved from https://great-ideas.org/enc.htm
McNeil, L., & Valenzuela, A. (2001). The harmful impact of the
TAAS system of testing in Texas: Beneath the accountability
rhetoric. In M. Kornhaber & G. Orfield (Eds.), Raising
standards or raising barriers? Inequality and high stakes testing
in public education (pp.127–150). New York, NY: Century
Foundation.
Menken, K. (2006, Summer). Teaching to the test: How No
Child Left Behind impacts language policy, curriculum, and
instruction for English language learners. Bilingual Research
Journal 30(2), 521–546.
National Dropout Prevention Center/ Network. (2010). Model
programs. Retrieved from
http://www.dropoutprevention.org/modelprograms
Nichols, S. L., Glass, G. V., & Berliner, D.C. (2012). High-
stakes testing and student
achievement: Updated analyses with NAEP data. Education
Policy Analysis Archives, 20 (20). Retrieved from
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/1048
Onosko, J. (2011). Race to the Top leaves children and future
citizens behind. Democracy & Education, 19(2), 1–11.
Retrieved from http://democracyeducationjournal.org/home/
Ravitch, D. (2011). Dictating to the schools: A look at the
effect of the Bush and Obama administration on schools.
Education Digest, 76(8), 4-9. Retrieved from
http://www.eddigest.com/
Save Education (and GOP Consistency): Dump No Child Left
Behind (2010). Retrieved from http://madvilletimes.com/
Torres, K. (2010, May 27). Atlanta honors student misses
graduation as she awaits test waiver. The Atlanta Journal-

Constitution. Retrieved from http://www.ajc.com
Truell, A., & Woosley, S. (2008). Admission criteria and other
variables as predictors of business student graduation. College
Student Journal, 42(2), 348–356. Retrieved from
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Zhao, Y. (2006). Are we fixing the wrong things? Educational
Leadership, 63(8), 28–31. Retrieved from
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership.aspx

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