To Test or Not to Test How young and how heavily should we be testing, or assessing, our children? What is the purpose of these tests? Should my child opt out? These are the questions surrounding the disputable discussion of standardized testing. Put simply, standardized tests are ones that require all test takers to answer the same questions, are scored in a “standard” or consistent manner, in order to compare the relative performance of individuals or groups of students, and are primarily associated with a large scale (Standardized). While the idea of the tests may be simple to understand, the controversy surrounding the issue becomes increasingly complex as politicians, business people, and teachers continue to debate the topic. For the purpose of this paper, two academic articles were chosen to display both sides of the …show more content…
Through these reports, one may see standardized tests should not be given to students for the reason they are biased, not cost-efficient, and do not measure the quality of learning or teaching. To begin, James Aycock, a former special educator and current director of scholar support at Grizzlies Prep, an all-boys public charter middle school located in downtown Memphis, wrote an article entitled, Teacher Voice: In Defense of Standardized Testing, to which he took a stance supporting standardized testing. He was able to publish his piece with SCORE, State Collaborative on Reforming Education. “SCORE is governed by a board of directors, which comprises 16 Tennessee business and philanthropic leaders committed to preparing our students for the global marketplace”(SCORE). In this piece the question of why schools need to test was answered and reasoning behind standardized tests were specified. Aycock believes we must test in order to figure out what students know and what they are able to do, this, in turn, will inform instruction. In other words, if the students understand the lesson already, the teacher does not need to teach