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The Pros And Cons Of Standardized Testing

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In the last 10 years, standards and testing have dominated many discussions on the quality of the American public education. In the article, “Why Standardized Tests Don’t Measure Educational Quality,” explains standardized tests as an examination that is scored in a “predetermined”, “standard manner” and predicts how students will perform in any educational setting (Popham, par.3). I believe that these tests are not enough to assess students fairly and do not take true measure of a student’s educational quality. Standardized tests should be only one measure of performance, and evaluated alongside other assessment tools that include classroom work, students’ hard work, and teacher evaluations. In my consideration, testing in its current format …show more content…

Going on with our second reason, we can see that these tests are also extremely unreliable due to a number of reasons. These tests only measure a small portion of what makes an education meaningful. Standardized testing is not meant to assess student learning but rank them. Robert Hach, in his article, quotes, “Tests have always ranked students into ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ ‘successes’ and ‘failures’” (par. 7). Sadly, this does seem to be the case in today’s public education since students are only measured on a small scale of standards. Students should be assessed on better criterions from classroom work, grades, students’ hard work, ability of skills, and teacher evaluations (Kellaghan, Madaus, and Airasian 11). There is much more to a student’s educational career; not just a few standards, which happen to lead their way to failure. Another factor that plays a huge role in the unreliability of these tests is when they are used to make big decisions in students’ lives, such as moving up a grade or high school graduation or even getting into an exceptional college (Henningfield 17). For example, the bad scores earned on these tests create an issue into getting in a higher-level college or university. I happen to believe that this may seem to happen quite a bit with many students; when they lower their expectations in applying to great colleges just because those colleges require your test scores to show a certain level of

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The idea that one test can accumulate all of one student’s academic abilities is no longer accurate. Today, the standardized tests that are used not only discriminate against the non wealthy families, it also is not an accurate reading of all of one’s abilities in and out of school. The tests also have become such a huge focus in the classroom that it is beginning to take away the process of learning in a classroom and being replaced with memorization to get good test scores. The standardized tests do not need to disappear all together, however the tests need a lot of revising if the states continue to use them as they do

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Many teachers fail to differentiate what is important and what is not. To be easy to grade, tests cannot measure higher order thinking. Critical thinking often gets left behind and memorization has taken over. Many students just simply don’t perform well on tests, but with these standards schools are held to it puts alot of stress on teachers who then push it onto their students. According to a psychology teacher, Melissa Hurst states that standardized test scores are greatly influenced by non academic factors, such as fatigue and attention span.

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Another issue with these tests is they do not measure knowledge or skills needed out in the real world which causes some teachers to not teach them. This lack of knowledge and skills are ruining students’ chances of being successful out of school since majority of them do not know the basic skills needed to function in

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Standardized tests are said to be the easiest and most efficient way to determine if teachers have taught standards and whether or not students have met standards, but the tests are not a fair measurement. According to Popham, “Employing standardized achievement tests to ascertain educational quality is like measuring temperature with a tablespoon. Tablespoons have a different measurement mission than indicating how hot or cold something is. Standardized achievement tests have a different measurement mission than indicating how good or bad a school/teacher is.” There is too much room for error to determine if a teacher is considered “good” or “bad.”

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Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish based on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. Albert Einstein, the world’s smartest man, said this quote. Standardized tests not only put the children in the fish’s position, but it makes them climb down the tree as well and go above and beyond anything just to receive a number or a letter telling them whether or not they failed. One of the top reasons that the tests are unnecessary is that they cause young children and teens anxiety. It may seem like something that one would just brush away; however, with this anxiety comes distress which can lead to their grades in school to drop because they are spending unnecessary time studying for a test that they may only

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On a sunny Saturday morning during the spring of my junior year, I was not sleeping in like most teenagers my age but rather sitting anxiously at a desk waiting for my SAT to be handed out. Test anxiety was consuming me as I was thinking about how this test was going to determine which colleges would accept me and which would not. Regardless, I ended up powering through and finishing my test. It was not until I received my test score two weeks later where I found myself looking at a number and feeling complete disappointment. I received an average score but could not help comparing myself to my other friends who had receive scores significantly higher than mine.

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Standardized Tests Cannot be Measuring Tools One time-restrained, meaningless multiple-choice test is relied upon to evaluate everything a student has learned and everything a teacher has taught in a year. Hours of educational opportunities wasted, all for standardized tests that have the ability to measure nothing. After the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2002, the emphasis on standardized testing has unfairly increased. Standardized testing is not an appropriate measure of a student’s ability because it forces teachers to teach the test instead of the content, measures only a small portion of educational qualities, and uses up valuable resources such as time and money.

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Albert Einstein once said: “What is tested does count, but much of what counts cannot be tested.” A child's efficiency should not be determined by the value of a test. Change needs to take place and a difference needs to happen within our education system in order for more students to transcend and succeed. So many different organizations have tried to tackle this problem due to the harm it has caused our youth. Yet, thus far standardized testing still remains a factor in the school systems (NJ.Gov, 2016).

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Certainly, some people say that standardized testing is the only way to determine growth and achievement within students. But, these tests don’t usually provide an entire measure of educational attainment. They don’t give attributes such as a sense of wonder, leadership, compassion, curiosity, and critical thinking. Daniel Koretz, a psychometrician stated, “…tests can measure only a portion of the goals of education, which are necessarily broader and more inclusive than the test could possibly be”(humbleisd.net). Standardized tests can at best only measure if a student is good at their core classes.

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Without support from teachers, students, and parents, standardized testing becomes a grueling barrage of tests with little to no reward for all the students’ hard work. Furthermore, the foundation of the endless test score misunderstandings, come from the fact that they only test a minimal amount of knowledge and skill rather than a direct or extensive measure of educational achievement (Koretz 9). It would be impossible to test students on their entire learning career but testing random bits and pieces that can easily be memorized proves nothing besides students’ stamina. Likewise, the fact that government agencies believe that one individual test of insubstantial value should determine the success rate of schools or students is inhumane. Humans are creatures of errors, the idea that a multiple choice test testing something that could be a star student’s worse topic seems preposterous.

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These days if a school’s standardized test scores are high, people assume the school’s staff is effective and the students are smart. If the scores are low, one assumes the staff is ineffective and the students don’t work hard enough. These evaluations are incorrect. Speaking as a student who has had to take a test every year since grade school, standardized test do not measure a student’s knowledge. Tests do not allow a student to show their full potential.

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The Downfall of Standardized Testing Adccording to a recent report, “42% of ACT-tested graduates in the class of 2022 met none of the subject benchmarks in English, reading, science, and math, which are indicators of how well students are expected to perform in corresponding college courses” (“ACT Test Scores” par. 3). In 2022, “ACT scores were at an average of 19.8, which were the lowest they had been in 30 years” (“ACT Test Scores” par. 1). The school system has failed students by allowing teachers to “teach the test” rather than teach students how to understand and comprehend the material. Therefore, standardized tests are an unfair way to measure a student’s academic performance because of outside factors, the impacts of high-stakes testing,

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From as early back as first grade, students are told that in order to be academically successful, they must be good at taking test. It does not matter if the students have anxiety with taking test, trouble with focusing, or are unable to grasp the concept of being tested. Students are expected to always make good grades so that they can get into a good college. But what about the students who don’t have any interest in college, the students who try their best but just don’t make the cut during test, or the students who need extra help but are unable to receive it because their low-test grades are seen as though they didn’t try hard enough?

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