Standardized Testing Persuasive Essay

694 Words3 Pages

For 50 years standardized testing has been around. They have come through all forms such as PARCC, CMAS, TCAPP, SATS, ACTS and so many others. According to TIME Magazine, over 1.5 million students are taking the tests. Even though the tests were originally created to recruit soldiers during World War 2, they have now become a way to measure student’s intelligence. These tests have created a gripping hold of stress over the students. They have allowed teachers to start “teaching to the test” and they do not fit everyone’s type of learning. Students should not have to take standardized tests. When the outcome of certain tests can impact what kind of job students can have, the college they go to, the courses they can take and if they make it …show more content…

This type of teaching is when teachers are preparing the students only for the questions on the test. A five-year University of Maryland study completed in 2007 found "the pressure teachers were feeling to 'teach to the test'" since NCLB was leading to "declines in teaching higher-order thinking, in the amount of time spent on complex assignments, and in the actual amount of high cognitive content in the curriculum." This evidence is showing that because of the tests, this new style is shortening higher-order thinking which is shortening the amount of deeper and higher quality curriculum being shared with students. The amount of time spent on preparing the kids for the specific tests has also become a problem. According to Craig Jerald, the writer of Reading Rockets, more time is being spent wasting education time, "They are losing a week of instruction to testing, which is bad enough," lamented a commentator in the Chicago Sun-Timeslast March. "But the test week comes on top of two or more weeks spent teaching kids how to take the test effectively." Because of standardized tests, teaching to the test has become a major problem that can only be solved with ridding of the