Standardized Testing: Wrong Questions, Right Solutions Hundreds of schools and thousands of students across America engage in standardized testing. From the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), every student has taken a standardized test. Standardized test supposedly measures your understanding of specific topics and assess how well you can apply them. While their intentions are to help, they are doing more harm than good. Standardized testing has destroyed countless schools, student’s careers and taken away time from teachers and students.
People in our community need to stand up for themselves, their children and students by educating themselves about what happens to these test scores,
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Fig. 1 shows the Keystone Result Averages from 2016. While there is growth in the advanced placement/ proficient placement, there are still 67,482 students left behind, just in the state of Pennsylvania. That’s 12.5% of our 536,209 students tested. According to thenotebook.org, “Any student whose overall score is below Proficient must take it again. Schools are required to give students supplemental instruction before a student takes the test again.” In short, students who struggle with these tests must take a course on how to take the Keystones, and then retake them. Student’s cannot graduate without passing them, making it yet another unnecessary burden and source of stress for …show more content…
“Teachers reported delivering better lessons because they could focus their preparation on how to teach, not what not to teach.” Wrote Craig Hochbein and Marty Pollio in an article entitled, “Making grades more meaningful.” While time is saved when teachers have a curriculum to follow, the curriculum is focused on the best way to take a test, and how to score well, rather than actually learning the content. Standardized tests take time out of teacher’s busy schedule as well as the students. They should be able to teach what they want and help the students grew as people and find styles that fit them best, not conform to a standard set by a few people.
In addition to wasting class time, these tests ask questions that are opinions or multiple answers depending on perspective. Sara Holbrook, a poet whose poems were used in the Texas state assessment tests (STAAR Test), wrote, “When I realized I couldn’t answer the questions posed about two of my own poems, … My eyes glazed over. I checked to see if anyone was looking. The questions began to swim on the page. Waves of insecurity. My brain in full