Why Do Students Use Standardized Testing?

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Standardized tests have a very long history back to around 206 BC known by China’s imperial examination. Nowadays, they are widely used in the education around the world. They are one of the most frequent methods to check the knowledge of students. However, some people claim that using standardized tests in education system may have a negative effect on the students. Nevertheless, standardized tests also have several positive effects on education as following. As its name suggests, standardized tests create a reliable standard to every students. In general, the purpose of using standardized tests is to measure the academic performance in the subjects that students have learnt. (Edglossary.org, 2015) So, in order to achieve their goal, the standardized tests are expected to be credible. Since the tests papers are graded by machine, it can be assured that there is no human error involved during the grading process. Not only being used for education, but …show more content…

It is rather predictable that society may be skeptical about the effect of using standardized tests on education. However, since standardized tests are created to measure the basic knowledge from student, the scope of the tests must be equivalent to the curriculum too. So curriculum will not be affected by standardized tests unless it provides a bad outcome to the student. In fact, more than three forth teachers in US do not think that using standardized tests will affect their teaching. (ProCon.org, 2015) Finally, if the teaching to be tested is really occurred, it can be beneficial to student too. As stated before, standardized tests focus on fundamental concepts that student should learn. So, if teachers actually cover those contents in their teaching, then students will get what they are expected to