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Standardized Testing Informative Essay

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With the initiation of the “No Child Left Behind Act” in 2001, the United States Government mandated standardized tests in all fifty states (ProCon). With these tests, the United States fell from 18th to 31st place world ranking in mathematics and had very little change in the ranking of reading scores(The Great Testing Debate). As though the government may believe that standardized exams are beneficial in assessing the educational achievements among students and schools, it fails to recognize the disadvantages the standardized testing system harvests in modern day society. Since the prime of its existence in the 1800s, standardized testing has reduced the richness in educational experimentation within schools and among students (Columbia University). Furthermore, score results do not allow educators to update their instruction methods, while these tests fail to measure a student’s overall progress and growth in subject curriculum. With these disadvantages, it is universally considered that standardized tests restrict quality education in America by creating a methodology of “teaching for the test” rather that gaining outside information and …show more content…

This is because many minority students are unable to speak advanced English. Therefore, they tend to do poorly on standardized exams. Studies have shown that many schools choose to leave out the scores of students who fail these tests from the standardized test results for schools. Therefore, this leaves the students who perform poorly worse off because these tests do not provide feedback on how to perform better. The Consortium of Chicago School Research recently found that students who were held back because of standardized tests had significantly higher dropout rates and lower achievement than their peers (The Great

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