Ethical Issues With Standardized Testing

Standardized testing is not something that has just come into play. Standardized testing has been around since WW1 when it was used to measure aptitude. 2002's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was the cause of the drastic increase in annual testing in all 50 states. US students dropped from 18th in the world in math in 2000 to 31st place in 2009, with a similar decline in science. Failures in the education system have been falsely blamed on teacher quality and increasingly on the pervasive use of standardized tests (ProCon,2015). Teachers are evaluated based on how well students test on the standardized test. What will be addressed in this paper is whether or not teachers’ jobs should be dependent on students’ standardized test scores. This issue will be examined through a ethical lense, addressing several different perspectives. These perspectives focus on the negative impact mandatory standardized testing

The test does not test students based upon progress but based on their skills. Parents were on board with the standardized testing until they realized the effects it has on child development, since the teachers are being evaluated and the students are no longer being taught standard or better curriculum(Johnson, 2015) When a parent sends their child to school they expect the teacher to teach the child to their full extent or potential. A public school parent in Cleveland, MS. told PDK International. “But there’s so much funding attached to testing, if we don’t do well on testing, then we’re going to lose funding, which means we’re going to lose teachers”(Walker, 2015). Parents have begun the Opt-Out movement among parents who want the right to pull their children out of state mandated standardized testing. It is reported 200,000 grade 3-8 students in New York state opted out of statewide tests in Reading and Math for the 2014-15 school