Against Standardized Testing Essay

871 Words4 Pages

Standardized Testing Is Not the Solution “The high stakes obsession of test and punish has only served to widen the gap between the schools in the wealthiest districts and those in the poorest,” 1 says NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. Throughout everyone’s education has been built on standardized testing. Standardized testing allows for comparisons to be made among schools in regards to student achievement and is in personal belief uncalled for. Standardized testing should no longer continue in schools because the tests provided because of testing formation having no real life situation skills, punishment of students and teachers, and severe stress in students . To begin, standardized testing uses a multiple-choice format to collect information …show more content…

As stated in a NEA Today article by Tim Walker, “It’s our job to bring back the arts and Social Studies and world languages and whatever it is our students need to leave behind the corrupting, unconscionable testing culture of blame and punish by test scores and move forward with an education that opens their minds to the infinite possibilities of their lives,” 4. With standardized testing, students are being derived from the actual important learning taking place in classrooms to take a test that determines their “intellectual abilities” with ridiculous testing. Students are being separated from the ability to learn and causes lower scores for the testing that matters. Not only are students being punished because of testing, it also has an effect on the teachers. Standardized tests are being used in high-stake ways to evaluate and punish teachers. Based on an article from The Washington Post, they “use student standardized test scores to evaluate teachers even though the exams were never intended for this purpose and the results are not reliable indicators a teacher’s effectiveness” 5. With standardized testing, teachers are being downgraded and punished because students fail the testing knowing that some of the information does not match the curriculum properly. Teachers are too busy trying to prepare students for the future by giving information that may help in future times; something a