Are Standardized Tests An Accurate Measure Of Student Abilities Essay

Argumentative Essay – "Are standardized tests an accurate measure of student abilities?"

As the American poet and author Anthony Liccione once said: "Just because something is tradition doesn't mean it's right."

Nowadays, standardized tests are the most common form of assessing a student's academic performance and potential for academic achievement. That is because standardized tests offer a very objective and fair way of measuring a student's abilities. They also allow for comparison across different schools, states, countries, and continents.

However, such tests' accuracy and reliability have received much criticism over the years. Some critics believe that standardized tests do not offer a fair evaluation because they cannot test a person's

I want to explore more effective methods to inspire new developments in this field, helping us capture a more holistic picture of every student.

Let us begin by understanding why this testing method has proven effective enough to become widely implemented in most institutions. This way, we can understand this method's advantages and see where it falls short.

Standardized testing is when every test taker gets the same test and the same amount of time to answer the test. They often come with multiple-choice questions, short-answer questions, or essays, all evaluated with fixed criteria.

These tests provide a consistent way of measuring students' knowledge. They assess students' understanding and knowledge of specific subjects and can be used in many subjects such as mathematics, languages, writing, sciences, and even critical thinking.

While standardized testing might offer insight into students' proficiency in specific subjects, I argue that it cannot give us a clear picture of their true capability.

MIT, Harvard, Stanford, California Institute of Technology, Yale University. Many famous US colleges and universities try to assess their applicants more holistically by using other testing methods besides standardized testing.

The SATs were created to be as objective and fair as possible. They were meant to bring more equality. If even they cannot deliver an entirely objective assessment, it is impossible to fully trust standardized tests.

In addition to that more than standardized tests is needed to assess every single skill a person can possess. On the contrary, they can only focus on surface-level skills like memorization, test-taking, and language understanding skills. This is supported by the fact that “students forget more than 90% of the points from a lecture after 14 days” (citation). Exams are no exception. Good grades reflect hard work but not necessarily in-depth knowledge and skills in a subject.

In other areas, standardized testing is completely unable to give an evaluation. These areas include a student’s social skills, and how well they get along with other students, teachers, and society in general. They can also not test a student’s maturity, how complex their thought processes are, and how they understand and see the