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Arguments Against Standardized Tests

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Standardized Tests Should one bad day affect how an individual’s life might turn out to be in the long run? Students are waiting eagerly for the dreadful moment the mailman arrives with their test results. An academic future is contrived through years of dedication and passionate motivation towards a successful life. For years the ACT’s have been sprouting many heated debates. Many began to question whether it was equitable to use the results of one test to define one’s whole academic ability throughout their school years. There are students all around the globe who have devoted their lives towards keeping up good grades and GPA’s, and some of them might not be the greatest test takers. The idea of recognizing how dependent colleges are …show more content…

On standardized exams, all test takers answer the same questions under the same conditions, initially in the multiple-choice format. Students are all put into one room and given a short amount of time where it is almost impossible to finish the test. The purpose of the Acts is to reward quick and correct answers to frivolous questions. According to the author of fairtest another reason why they cannot measure intellectual intelligence is that they do not measure the ability to think deeply or creatively in any field. “Their use encourages a narrowed curriculum, outdated methods of instruction, and harmful practices such as grade retention and tracking”(FairTest). If deep thought is not required then it cannot measure an individual’s knowledge. Tests should require some sort of work or set of steps to achieve …show more content…

Open-ended questions allow students to display knowledge and apply critical thinking skills, but most require human readers. in fact within the last 24 to 36 months the acts has been slowly increasing its level of difficulty. “If you compare some of the prior released ACT tests from 2005-2010 to ones from 2011-2014, the test is noticeably harder to finish, especially in Math, Reading, and Science” (Eufinger). He also states that many of the English questions such as the rhetorical skills questions have actually become less clear cut and more time consuming. These new alternations are actually affecting students unequally in a horrible

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