Standardized Testing Research Paper

Standardized tests are very common in today’s modern society. They are used as a tool to measure a person’s performance and indicate how their estimated performance will be in a college class. Every year hundreds of students take the ACT or SAT in order to get accepted into their college of choice and to receive scholarships, but they fail to see the problems with these standardized tests. As more and more people take these tests, the national average score falls causing doubt in the extremely important system. This is leading people to question whether or not the ACT and SATs are accomplishing what they were created to do. Standardized tests do not work because of inaccuracy, bias, and student misunderstanding. The ACT and SAT tests are used as college entrance exams all over the US. Most schools require you to take one or both of these tests and get a minimum score in order to be accepted to that school. The SAT and ACT have been proven to be fairly accurate at predicting a student’s average performance for their freshman year in college. For the majority of the time, ACT and SAT scores are paired with the student’s high school GPA in order to get a more accurate prediction on their performance. This pairing of the tests is way more effective than just the test alone.

The SAT and ACT tests only check to see what vocabulary the student has and how quickly they can come up with the correct answer. The math sections just find out if the student is able to come up with the correct answer with the amount of time given. This causes serious concern due to the fact that students will not be on as much of a time crunch when they are doing their work for college classes, which are what these standardized tests are designed to predict. Because of this, it is not reasonable to assess a student’s abilities solely based off of their test