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Standardized Testing Outline

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Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States.
Attention getter: Last year, districts in Philadelphia had a $0 budget for books. At the same time, a quarter of a percent of America’s education budget, several billions of dollars, was spent on standardized testing.
Thesis statement: Standardized testing is not beneficial to K-12 education in the United States.
Definitions:
Standardized test: Any form of test that requires all test takers to answer the same questions, in the same way, and that is scored in a consistent manner, which makes it possible to compare the relative performance of individual students.
Beneficial: Favorable or advantageous; resulting in good.
K-12 education: A short form for the publicly-supported school grades prior to college. These grades are kindergarten and the 1st through the 12th grade.

Introduction: My partner and I find the idea of spending limited money on tests which students don’t have the resources to take to be overwhelmingly irrational. Fundamentally, standardized testing has encouraged test-taking at the expense of problem solving, without solving any problems itself. It is for this reason that my partner and I negate today’s resolution.

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UVA’s Dewey Cornell presents some harrowing results. These results indicated that more than three fourths of the students reported adverse emotional reactions. For example, half of the students were willing to admit that they felt stupid. More than half reported that they felt depressed, and more than half reported that they felt embarrassed. Most students reported multiple negative reactions. The issue isn’t simply that testing cripples students’ self-esteem and subsequent passion toward their own education. The issue is that these harms are the results of testing which doesn’t even measure real-world skills or

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All students dread one thing when it comes to school - testing. Standardized test are the main focus in our school systems instead of actually gaining knowledge at the end of the year. As a mother, Michelle Rhee, understands the lack of attention given on education as a whole instead of just waiting on the scores, but she still agrees on continuing with standardized test. Kristina Rizga opposes the opinion of Michelle Rhee as she does not believe standardized test truly measure the intelligence of a student. Kristina Rizga proves her stand against standardized test by utilizing solid use of argumentation.

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Proponents see standardized testing as a way of making testing more efficient and effective by minimizing cost and increasing people’s accountability for their performance in the system. Opponents on the other hand argue that the systems has limitations based on its very nature on what can be tested and as a result of these standards needing to be met sacrifice some very important aspects of students education experience as well as force onto students and teachers a one size fits all model that has failed to deliver on its promises. After having reviewed all the evidence in detail it becomes clear to me that standardized testing is not an effective system for educating students and does more bad than good

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Standard testing is a very controversial and important subject because it deals with the progression of the American education system. The practice of these assessments has been highly scrutinized not only for the way it has changed the format of classrooms, but also for its accuracy, pressure, and abundance. In 2001, standardized testing became federally mandated through the No Child Left Behind Act by former president George Bush Jr. According to research from the Council of the Great City Schools, students have been taking “an average of 113 tests from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade” (K. Hefling). These numbers have increased to the point where parents have opted for their children to not attend standardized exams.

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Standardized testing has not improved education in America. Standardized tests have been issued in schools all across the nation for years now. Some people like them and some people don’t. They do not help the student learn more information than they would without the tests. The U.S. has dropped from 18th highest scores in schools in the world to be in the 30’s on almost all of the subjects on the test.

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Kane, director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, compares this occurrence to be equivalent to saying, ”because there are some players that cheated in Major League Baseball, we should stop keeping score, because that only encourages people to take steroids”. As the third argument, people against these test say that, high stakes testing places too much pressure on students. Norman says he that these test can sometimes constitute cruel and unusual punishment, but surely there is a middle ground between the practices and full-scale abandonment of standardized testing can be found. “Those who argue against standardized testing are not only misguided, but are also leading U.S school and students in the wrong direction” (Augustine). Jessie B. Ramey disagrees.

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Introduction Standardized tests may be used for a wide variety of educational purposes. For example, they may be used to determine a young child’s readiness for kindergarten, identify students who need special-education services or specialized academic support, place students in different academic programs or course levels, or award diplomas and other educational certificates. Thesis Statement Standardized tests should not be eliminated completely, but should rather be evaluated in addition to other factors such as grades, extracurricular activities, and volunteer hours. This would take pressure off of students during standardized tests, allow colleges to see how well-rounded the students are, and give students who are better in other areas

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The silence in the room, with only the sound a pencil makes with the paper, produces the heart-thumping atmosphere standardized testing gives to students. Most students experience the overwhelming stress that is brought upon their academic life from SAT, ACT, or any standardized tests. They see them as one of the most important factors for college acceptance. The constant worry that sits on their shoulders will not disappear until testing is over, and there is nothing they can do about it until they hopefully get a letter from their dream college.

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Standardized tests are one of the most popular ways schools attempt to evaluate academic intelligence of students, school districts, and teachers. These tests are used more specifically to evaluate student performance in the education system by testing their abilities in mathematics, english and sciences. By giving every student the same test, they are setting a standard idea for how well every student should score on the test, such as the SAT or the ACT, no matter the school or educational process they are receiving. Allowing every student to take the exact same test, gives the state a way to generalize student’s academic intelligence without having to do much work to make the testing one hundred percent fair. Standardized testing in schools should no longer be required because it discriminates against the less wealthy families, does not effectively measure achievement and becomes a distraction to the student’s learning environment.

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Increasingly today in America’s school system, there is a recognition of tension between individuality and conformity. The struggle between students’ personal needs and the needs of the whole continues to grow. This can be seen though the controversial issue of standardized testing. These are tests that are designed in a way, which are administered and recorded in a consistent method. In standardized testing, all test takers are required to answer the same set of multiple-choice, true or false questions, short answer, and essay questions.

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IV. Standardized Testing is not effective nor reliable due to its inability to effectively measure a student’s intelligence or ability, the pressure it applies to both the student and the teacher, and its negative impact on teaching curriculum. (To begin, let’s look at how testing gauges students) Body I. Standardized testing is not an accurate means to measure a student’s ability or

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Standardized Testing hurts children who think in different ways. This is quoted by Valerie Strauss, who makes a great point by saying children can only learn by the way it 's taught and it cannot be learned from other sources. Standardized Testing limits what children can learn and how they learn. Schools also spend an extraordinary amount on testing that could be going to better education and more funding to arts and extracurricular activities. Although, some say standardized testing is beneficial to the way students learn, statistics show that this is simply not true, standardized testing adds unnecessary stress on students, suppresses their creativity, and limits the creativity of teachers.

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In identifying why these standardized tests exist, the hope is to generate a metric which will be used to analyze whether the current standardized testing system is sufficient and identify both areas of strength and weakness. The ultimate hope is to answer the question, “What is the purpose of state-mandated standardized tests for public elementary and middle schools, and how well to they fulfill this purpose,” and by doing so, improve standardized

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The room is silent, cold, and bleak and the anxiety in the air could be cut with a knife. It is hard to imagine another time in anyone’s life when they will be under these same circumstances and required to take a test. There is little to nothing about this experience that can be taken and applied to a student’s life in the future. A fundamental reason for attending school is to learn skills that will help growth and success in the future, yet how is standardized testing accomplishing that goal? Students simply spit out answers on multiple-choice questions with no critical thinking or collaboration.

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The average American student takes about 112 standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and 12th grade (Strauss). A standardized test is any form of test that requires the student to answer the same selection of common questions in a consistent matter, which makes it possible to compare relative student performance. Standardized tests restrict creativity, waste time, and waste money. We should get rid of standardized tests in our school system. Standardized tests limit a student’s ability to express creativity.

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School’s are using standardized testing for the wrong reason. “A standardized test is any examination that’s administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner. There are two major kinds of standardized tests: aptitude tests and achievement tests” (Popham, 1999). The most common examples of aptitude tests are the SAT and the

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