Arguments Against Standardized Testing

In the world of education, there is perhaps no subject that is more controversial than standardized testing. The website ProCon.org reports that the earliest form of standardized tests was given to applicants for government jobs in the early seventh century in Imperial China. (“Background”) In the west, standardized testing wasn’t used until the Industrial Revolution. During this time, children who worked on farms or in factories began going back to school, and standardized tests were an efficient way to test them. In the U. S., modern standardized testing began in 1965 with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as a way to raise the standards in education. However, the use of standardized tests didn’t take off until 2002 and the No Child Left Behind Act, an act that required students in third through eighth grade to take standardized tests every year. No Child Left Behind also required sophomores to take these tests, and

The real question here isn’t whether standardized testing should exist – there’s no doubt it should because it’s useful as baseline data for the academic abilities of students, and it can be helpful in holding teachers accountable if they aren’t teaching well enough – but whether there should be so much focus on standardized testing, as well as if standardized testing is really the best measure of student growth. As a student who has had to deal with standardized tests since third grade, the first year we took the Iowa Assessments – then called the Iowa Test of Basic Skills – I am a firm believer that there is far too much focus placed on standardized tests, and students take a lot more of these tests than they