Pros And Cons Of Standardized Testing

High Expectations and Pressure in Standardized Testing

From the first time a student steps foot into a school the pressure is on, even in kindergarten. In elementary school the pressure is very subtle but it never goes away. As a child you don’t know that there’s pressure you're just focused on having fun. But from a young age schools implement in you that they expect greatness, in all aspects of school from sports, activities, and especially academics. They want all their students to have the best test scores and grades so it makes the school look good. Now there is nothing wrong with wanting the best from your students as they should want themselves, but there is something wrong with pressuring students to be perfect. How much pressure

One test shouldn’t define a student's intelligence level, since so many variables can go into why a student didn’t perform well. But since we are forced to take these test it's only logical that schools want the best from there students. There is nothing wrong with having high expectations, but applying too much pressure can hurt students. “American Schools in crisis” speaks on this “What’s misleading about this kind of gain is that aggressive test-prep activities may lift scores without improving students’ knowledge or skills.” (Ravitch pg.12). Through this constant pressure students are learning how to take the test not the actual information on the test. Also students are so determined to do well on these standardized tests that if they don’t receive good scores they feel as though they are failures. Which isn’t true at all, schools like to believe that the pressure they apply on their students from these high expectations will make the student do well. But the truth is the pressure just implements fear into them and makes them feel like they aren't smart. Schools need to maintain high expectations but eliminate the consist pressure hanging over students

Many may think that this problem of grades and test scores only affects students, but this severely affects the teacher. The government is always enforcing schools to increase test scores or risk losing funding and possible shut down. Then this message is strictly told to teachers which becomes an incentive to them to teach to produce good test scores. Which leaves this lingering thought in the back of their minds of losing their jobs if they aren’t able to produce. This completely changes the teaching and learning experience of the classroom. Now, teachers are just teaching for the test and all other information that was supposed to be taught is disregarded. I have personally experienced the effects of pressure from the government to produce. Once our school got the message that they had to produce or they would lose funding, our whole school changed. There was no longer any fun assignments or interesting lessons. All day every day was spent on preparing for this test, we didn’t discuss any other topics. Once the teachers received this message they all seemed so stressed, at that young age I didn’t realize it but I understand now. Their jobs and livelihood were at jeopardy based on children's test scores. They had to produce and they made sure we were experts at how to take these tests. We took standardized tests in every class, except art and music. Were given those tests for homework that's all we ever did.