Standardized Testing Dbq

Even though many students absolutely hate them, state assessments are a big part of the American education system. Everyone has taken a standardized test at some point in their life, and almost everyone has done poorly on one. They are primarily used as a measurement of how well students learn, but are they truly accurate? There are strong arguments on both sides, which has started a heated conflict about the productiveness of these tests. Standardized testing has been around for many years, starting in Imperial China where it was intended to determine a person’s aptitude for a government position (“Do Standardized Tests Show an Accurate View of Students’ Abilities?”). In some states, these tests are even used to decide whether or not a student

In a study done at Michigan State University in 1983, Donald Freeman and his associates selected five standardized tests that were given nationwide, as well as four textbooks that were widely used to see if the material on the tests is covered in the textbooks. They found that 50 to 80 percent of the questions on the test were not adequately covered in the textbooks. Michigan researchers said, “The proportion of topics presented on a standardized test that received more than a cursory treatment in each textbook was never higher than 50 percent” (Popham). This proves that some teachers, while it is not their fault, do not appropriately prepare their students for these tests, because the material is barely discussed in the textbook. Those teachers who are unfamiliar with the type of questions that are on the state assessments are going to assume that if it is truly meant to test how well students learn, then it will assess them based on how the subject in question is taught locally. This is typically not the case, and many students, regardless of their aptitude to learn, suffer because of it. There is a substantial difference in most schools between what is being taught and what is being

There are also much better ways to test a student’s capability to learn; a 2006 Center on Education Policy conducted a study and found that a curriculum that follows state standards and uses the test data as feedback led to higher scores than those that prioritized test-taking skills. When teachers are more focused on teaching material rather than test strategies, their students benefit from it (“Do Standardized Tests Show an Accurate View of Students’ Abilities?”). Several alternative methods to state assessments for measuring a student’s academic success include comparing high school graduation rates and the number of dropouts, offering advanced placement courses, and looking at the percentage of the former students that are admitted to colleges. State assessments are more harmful than helpful to students; they are a large cause of test anxiety and a majority of teachers can never fully prepare their students. Although state assessments are an easy way to be able to see the growth of students, that does not mean that they are the best