How do you determine the amount of intelligence someone possesses? You give them an intelligence quotient or IQ test. Almost every possible means to determine someone’s intelligence is derived from a standardized test that will give an answer as to how intelligent or not someone who takes these tests might be. But where do you judge the creativity and ingenuity in standardized tests? In 1965, under President Johnson, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was initiated. The ESEA was an attempt to better educate low income area schools by providing more federal funds to schools that averaged lower test scores. Throughout the decades the ESEA has been revised and given new names, such as, the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 …show more content…
When there are higher education levels there are often bigger economic growths. But, standardized testing and curriculums are merely a tool to gauge how students are doing, rather than how much a countries economy will grow, because there are many other factors that can and will predict economic growth (Hanushek and Woessmann 1). Therefore, although some researchers and government officials have argued for the need for standardized testing to determine the levels of education students in kindergarten through 12th grade have so that the government may take action to better prepare students for the workforce, I will argue that standardized testing diminishes critical and creative thinking that is critical to the advancement of business and …show more content…
Teaching to the test is where teachers will teach students methods to use while taking these tests so that they might get higher scores. Unfortunately, many teachers are expressing that, “Their teaching morale has been lowered and that they felt guilty and embarrassed due to the accountability of high-stakes testing. Some teachers have reached a level of stress which has led to them moving out of the field of education due to negative experiences with high-stakes testing” (Dankiw, Johanson, Loder, and Watson). In the 2014 study Effects of High-Stakes Testing on Third through Fifth Grade Students: Student Voices and Concerns for Educational Leaders done by Carol E. Watson, Matthew Johanson, Megan Loder, and Julianne Dankiw in the Journal of Organizational Learning and Leadership, Watson, Johanson, Loder, and Dankiw examined the journals of a couple hundred third through fifth grade students at an Eastern Pennsylvania elementary school to understand what the students think about these tests and how does it make them feel. The results of the journal entries found that almost all of the students had grown fearful, anxious, and stressed about the tests, and some even began to become physically ill due to the high