The tradition of standardized testing in an educational setting got its start in 1845 when American educational reformer Horace Mann proposed Boston Public School students demonstrate their knowledge of learned material through written tests. By moving to standardized written testing from the accustomed annual oral exam Mann aimed to provide students the opportunity to prove their abilities through the same benchmarks across as many dimensions as possible (Gallagher, 2003).
Administration of standardized exams began to gain significant momentum in American schools after the formation of the College Board after the end of World War I. Using the Army’s Alpha and Beta tests as a model for schools, the College Board worked to standardize the
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NCLB has changed the landscape of teaching and learning; many have cited the government mandated testing as conducive to a narrowing of curriculums due to the pressure put on educators to prepare students for exams, a practice commonly referred to as teaching to the test. In part to federal and state summative exams students in grades 3 through 9 take 10 exams throughout the school year, averaging around 15 to 16 hours according to a report from the Center for American Progress (Lazarin, 2014). In addition to disrupting learning, frequent standardized testing is shown to cause high levels of stress and negative effects on students’ emotional and physical well-being during pivotal stages of emotional development and maturity (Abeles, …show more content…
Many argue such tests take a one-size-fits all approach that lack the ability to deliver accurate results and no matter how well crafted will never be a solution for all issues. Standardized exams lack the ability and quality to adequately measure such a large and diverse population presented within the U.S. student body and is based on false assumptions that compound biases and inequalities. Opponents argue testing doesn’t really even the playing field for all students as was originally intended by NCLB. Standardized testing hurts students from disadvantaged backgrounds because while in being given the same exams, students from more affluent backgrounds have the means to hire personal tutors and take expensive test prep courses to specifically prepare for test (Neill & Medina,