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Essay On Standardized Testing

464 Words2 Pages

The ‘One Test Fits All’ Approach
Semhar Mekonnen
AP Language B1

John Taylor Gatto, a former educator and writer, once said, “What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to proceed with growing up.” Education cultivates the minds of the future. Somehow, America has gotten away from recognizing this as an opportunity; a privilege. Certainly, education has the power to single-handedly inspire American youth. Instead, our education system chooses to focus on how to hold schools more accountable for their results. In order to track the improvement of schools, American public schools are feeling the heat. Initiatives like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have bombarded the academic agenda (ProCon). Assessing the quality of our schools, however, cannot be answered like bubbling in a scantron. Standardardized testing should be eradicated because it gauges student’s intelligence inaccurately, takes away from learning, and is not worth …show more content…

When it comes to standardized testing, too much value is going into ___. An analysis of a popular standardized math test found that only 3% of the questions require high level of conceptual knowledge and only 5% tested “high level thinking skills such as problem solving and reasoning”(Kohn). Standardized tests prove to have content that reflects limited relevance and neglects higher order thinking skills (Linn). Standardized testing promotes superficial thinking. The future leaders of America should be skilled in critical thinking and reasoning, yet these methods of reinforces otherwise. Students get rewarded with good scores by memorizing and training for tests. When choosing things like how to allocate funds for schools and who gets accepted into college, we shouldn’t base decisions on flawed data because it will result in flawed

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