Standardized Testing Informative Essay

719 Words3 Pages

The field of education is one filled with many different questions. There are multiple aspects of the career that catch my eye as I ponder if education is the profession for me. Like I have mentioned in assignments prior, I have two parents that are currently high school teachers. Having two educators that are also parents has allowed for me to have an insight to a teacher’s life outside of the classroom and school. As I have grown older and started to pay attention more, I have realized some of the main issues my parents would come home and have to deal with. The most occurring issue I realized almost always involved the importance of the standardized test. Over time, I have never enjoyed taking standardized tests and never fully understood …show more content…

There are people that believe that standardized testing is beneficial for students and an effective way of evaluating the student’s performances as well as the performance of the educators. Other than hearing my parent’s share how they feel about standardized testing, I have honestly never heard the opinions of other people. Regarding the topic of public opinion, a man named Richard P. Phelps wrote a book titled, Defending Standardized Testing. This article is about the study of various polls about the beliefs people have regarding standardized testing over time. His findings show a majority of parents actually believe that these tests are beneficial and should be administered (Phelps, 2005). In his article he mentions, “Indeed, the public would like to see standardized tests administered more often, and for the purposes for which they are now administered” (Phelps, 2005, p. 24). To also show the significant support that people have had over time of testing he mentions the beliefs of parents stating, “Decades of surveys reveal that a very large majority of parents want standards to matter and want them to be enforced uniformly” (Phelps, 2005, p. 25). Surprisingly, more individuals believe that standardized testing should be used more than what I