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The Pros And Cons Of Standardized Testing

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Iowa, CogAt, Air, STAR, OAT, OGT, OAA, PARCC, ACT, SAT, PSAT: what is the commonality of this seemingly random alphabet soup? In recent years, students have taken these standardized tests in school and many have taken nearly each one listed above. These tests are designed for the purpose of checking students’ growth and knowledge of core subjects like reading, math, english, science, and writing. While this may sound beneficial and look like a good idea on paper, the truth is the assessments are flawed for multiple reasons. Less importance should be placed upon high-stakes and standardized testing at all grade levels; too much stress is placed on students whose scores that fail to completely show their growth and personality. Originally, the …show more content…

First, students have to be proficient in using the technology. If the students have trouble, administration and teachers need to know how to troubleshoot computers. They also need to problem solve on the fly, if issues arise, since the tests are time-sensitive. A school’s technology may be outdated and not equipped to handle the test. This may not be the teacher’s fault, but the school districts due to insufficient funds to update their computer and wifi system. Even if the teachers are computer-savvy, difficulties such as wifi problems, computer glitches, test system mishaps and other mistakes could hinder a school from performing well on these tests (Schaffhauser). Specifically at a public school in Northwest Ohio, the PARCC tests gave test takers and test givers alike technological headaches. Put simply, these tests are not given in the optimal …show more content…

The education system puts a disadvantage on schools by creating a blanket standard for all of the students in the state. This is a cookie-cutter approach to education that does not personalize standards for individual schools. While it is important for students to be held to some sort of standard, it is more beneficial to set an attainable, yet challenging, requirement that is tailored to small regions. Low achieving students may struggle to meet a standard that may be considered average and still find themselves, even after hard work, to be below proficient. If the child’s starting point was on the bottom end, he or she could have made leaps and bounds of improvement in crucial skills throughout the school year. Standardized testing is not fair for the student and the teacher because a test requirement does not show the amount of growth that could have taken place under the

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This is because “if we measure narrowly, you see results just as narrowly. In other words, the more standardized our assessment, the more kids fail” (61). The limitation that those standards create prevent students who have skills that are not measured to be exploring and building up those skills. These standards limit creativity and exploration of new ideas and ways of learning that can benefit students who were failed by the system. Despite all

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Standardized Testing While can be beneficial, standardized testing isn't improving American education. Standardized testing evaluates only the individual performance of a student instead of the overall growth of a student over the course of a year. In my opinion, Standardized testing is not enhancing education in America. Not all students who are smart and take in all the information test well. For instance, there are many people who simply do not perform well on tests.

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One of the biggest flaws is standardized testing has not improved student achievement. " Despite using them for several decades, policymakers and educators do not yet know how to use test-based incentives to consistently generate positive effects on achievement and to improve education." So if these tests aren’t improving our students, then why do we have them? I believe we need to change the tests or improve them somehow so that we do see some sort of improvement. Tests are very crucial to education because they show what a student knows, if we took these tests out completely then we would have no idea if students are improving or declining.

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Over two hundred parents claim to not let a student go through standardized testing. The earliest records of standardized testing come from China, for the subjects of philosophy and poetry. America “copied” the European education system. In the early 20th century, immigrants took “standardized tests”. To determine possible career and where each person stood socially.

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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

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The tests only ask for knowledge or facts that the student can barely recall and when taking these tests they are taken on a school day and they take 2-3 hours to complete. Standardized testing began in the 1920s to test students ability but was renamed to Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) (Livia). The American College Testing (ACT) and the SAT are both used in the United States for college admission. However Swope and Miner believe that, “Standardized tests will never answer the questions of what our children need to learn to be leaders and informed citizens in a multicultural, ever-changing world” (Cole, Hulley and Quarles 19).

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Many feel that the tests are unfair and this is why standardized

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Standardized tests also favor those with socio-economic advantages. If one child lives in an environment with bad teachers and poor classroom basics, and another child lives in an environment with great teachers and many opportunities, how are they both supposed to succeed on a standardized test? It is almost impossible. And, in another way standardized tests are discriminatory, a study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation says that the gap for achievement test scores between rich and poor have grown by almost 60 percent since the 1960s(Rocks). As it has been seen, standardized tests are not fair to many different

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There is a doctor, Thomas Armstrong, that focuses on youth development, and he believes that standardized tests don’t help or let anyone, whether it’s teachers or students, improve. He wrote that “Standardized tests don’t provide any feedback on how to perform better. The results aren’t even given back to the teachers and students until months later, and there are no instructions provided by test companies on how to improve these test scores” (Armstrong). Since the test companies of standardized tests don’t give feedback to teachers and students, it is impossible for them to know what they need to work and improve upon. If students can’t improve their scores, they are stuck either staying in the same spot or downgrading in the education system.

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Standardized tests are toxic to the future prospects of America: the students. The tests are prejudiced against minority test-takers as a result of biased questions. Students’ education is harmed due to narrowed curriculums and school closings. With the knowledge gained about standardized tests, many colleges have become “test-optional institutions” (Soares 3). In fact, according the article “Standardized Tests Discriminate Against Minority and Lower Income Students,” Wake Forest University went test-optional in 2009 and today there are over 870 test-optional colleges, representing almost 40 percent of all four-year degree colleges in America (Soares 3).

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Thousands of tiny circles spread across the page, labeled with your first few ABC’s. Your palms begin to sweat as you carefully choose B, but it can’t be B! You’ve already chosen this letter the last three times, and now you’re left in a distressed state. This is the stressful feeling most students experience during standardized tests. Creating even more stress is the place these standardized tests count toward, a burdening place known as college.

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School’s are using standardized testing for the wrong reason. “A standardized test is any examination that’s administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner. There are two major kinds of standardized tests: aptitude tests and achievement tests” (Popham, 1999). The most common examples of aptitude tests are the SAT and the

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Many tests are put onto the computer when they could just be put on to paper and have it be read to the class and we'll figure it out, but people don't think that it's the way to do things. Sometimes they make it a big deal when we do a test to make us worry and it plays with our emotions and makes us upset. When a child is upset they won't do as good on a test if they were

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A standardized test, according to W. James Popham of ASCD.org, is “any examination that is administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner.” In standardized testing, examinees are instructed to precisely answer a specific set of questions, which are usually multiple-choices. Although standardized testing is believed to be an objective method to grade students, administers should understand that these tests are not only a waste of time, but also a waste of money. Standardized testing is irrelevant to a student’s education because it is an unreliable way to measure a student’s knowledge, causes stress, and hinders a student’s overall learning potential.

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Standardized tests are tests designed to evaluate a student’s performance and as well as the teacher’s performance where these tests contain the same set or common questions which are taken by the students annually in the same way (The Johnson Center, n.d.). However, these tests may also vary depending on which of the student’s or school’s ability would they like to evaluate. Standardized tests are of different forms. There are tests intended to evaluate a student’s learning and academic progress¬—if a student was able to learn what he/she was supposed to learn¬—over a period of time.

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