What´s Standardized Testing Effective?

In 2015, a poll was taken from over 1500 National Education Association members, and more than 70 percent of those polled believed that standardized testing is not useful and helpful to students in developing any skills (Walker). Standardized tests have been taken since the early 1900s in many age groups. A standardized test is any sort of test that has both the same questions and the same answers to all people it is given to. They are usually given over wide areas, such as states or even whole countries, and can be used to see what knowledge a general population has gained from their educations. Some major standardized tests are the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the American College Test (ACT). These tests are taken by people that are

There is a doctor, Thomas Armstrong, that focuses on youth development, and he believes that standardized tests don’t help or let anyone, whether it’s teachers or students, improve. He wrote that “Standardized tests don’t provide any feedback on how to perform better. The results aren’t even given back to the teachers and students until months later, and there are no instructions provided by test companies on how to improve these test scores” (Armstrong). Since the test companies of standardized tests don’t give feedback to teachers and students, it is impossible for them to know what they need to work and improve upon. If students can’t improve their scores, they are stuck either staying in the same spot or downgrading in the education system. Students that get advanced scores on tests are able to move ahead and have better opportunities in their schools, but students that don’t score well are left behind, sometimes barely moving from grade to grade. When making changes to the schooling system, Thomas Jefferson said “twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually” (Congressional Research Service, 269). The president of the United States of America, when setting up a part of the education system, said that only some of the extra-intelligent students would be taken and given amazing opportunities. He himself said that they would be taken from the rubbish,

Many students either care too much about the tests, and therefore try to cheat, or they don’t care enough about the test, making the results worse than they normally would be. Ryan Deffenbaugh explains that one college, along with many others, no longer requires test scores for applicants because there were many arguments that “the scores are not a great indicator of future success in college, and that a billion-dollar-test prep industry creates an unfair playing field for students from families with lower incomes” (Deffenbaugh, 16). This college, Purchase College, is one of many that has the opinion of standardized tests being unreliable when accepting students. They don’t show true intelligence because anyone can get some luck when guessing. An article states, “Kids learn early on that they don 't have to think outside the box, they don 't have to be creative, collaborative or be critical thinkers. They just have to be good at memorizing rote facts and eliminating the wrong