Standardized Testing: The Liar of Education Throughout the U.S., millions of students stressed out of their minds are getting out their No.2 pencils to spend a school day in a packed auditorium for 4 hours, the reason for this is the annual standardized test. Whether it is the ACT, or the SAT, these tests have become a large part of success for entering colleges, or universities, and have been unremitting in American education since the mid-1800s. In 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which authorized annual tests in reading, and math, and required schools to boost up scores, or face penalties (Layton 3-4). The act has faced multiple attacks, but the NCLB is not the actual problem. Standardized testing in general has, as Alfie Kohn puts it, “swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole” (Kohn 1). There are facts against standardized testing, and yet, there’s still evidence that’s supportive, such as the 100 year analysis of testing research done by Richard P. Phelps. The research showed that 93% of studies found student testing to have a positive effect on overall student achievement (Phelps). …show more content…
Alfie Kohn presents a number of facts in his article, “Standardized Testing and Its Victims,” one of the facts states that a study of math results on the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that the combination of 4 such variables (number of parents living at home, parents educational background, type of community, and poverty rate) accounted for 89% of the differences in state scores (Kohn 3). Some of these variables the student can’t do anything about, and yet, because of it, they’re more likely to get a lower score, and jeopardize their future. In the same article, Kohn upbraids again with another