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The Pros And Cons Of Standardized Testing

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A,B,C,D. These letters determine what amount of success you have on tests. One specific test measures your objective achievement over the course of your career as an American student: the standardized test. The debate on whether or not this is an effective way to ensure that curriculum is retained is an ongoing one. To better understand the shortcomings of standardized testing, one must first have knowledge of what it is. After careful consideration of the presented evidence, a logical conclusion to come to is that the negatives of standardized testing outweigh the benefits. The conventional method of standardized testing is an outdated and ineffective way to measure students’ progress.
Standardized testing is “…[A]ny form of test that (1) requires all test takes to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from [a] common bank of questions in the same way, and that (2) is scored in a ‘standard’ or consistent manner, which makes it possible to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of students. (“Standardized Testing.”)
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The simple act of standardizing an entire country’s students without taking into account the unique abilities of an individual learner sets up for a country where all children’s knowledge is exactly the same. Standardized tests do not acknowledge a student’s creativity, or capabilities in the arts, which in fact is already a bias towards certain areas of study, such as math and science. According to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)’s statistics “[T]he US slipped from 18th in the world in math…to 31st place in 2009, with a similar drop in science…” (Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America?) With no indication that the implementation of standardized testing is effective, even in the biased areas, it is not necessary for the U.S. to require

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