Achievement Test Weaknesses

Standardized testing has become the main component in determining a student’s capability. A test should not determine if the student has a mind that is above average. In the article titled “Standardized Testing: Undermining Equity in Education”, it states, “Qualities such as a student’s sense of citizenship, ethics, confidence/self-esteem,...respect for others, self-discipline,...are not seen in standardized tests.” Every student is unique and has

Students dread the time of the year when they stop with their course material and begin to prepare for test. Everyone is in agreement that some type of revolution is needed when it comes to education; eliminating standardized test will aid the reform. The need for standardized testing has proven to be ineffective and outdated; some leading educationalist also believe this because the tests do not measure a student’s true potential. This will save money, stop labeling, and alleviate stress in students and teachers.

Additionally, Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” There are different forms of intelligence that go beyond what our school system measures. Students are not a unit to be measured, and students cannot be assigned a numerical value to identify their intelligence. Students are diverse—they learn at different speeds, and they learn in different ways. Focusing solely on test scores is hurting our students and deviating away from building our society on success and excellence. Critics are slowly realizing the problems associated with standardized tests—they create anxiety, they are extremely biased, and they do not measure the ability to think deeply.

“…only twenty-two percent of those surveyed said increased testing had helped the performance of their local schools compared with twenty-eight in 2007” (“Public Skeptical of Standardized Testing.”). Furthermore the poll indicated an eleven percent increase, compared to last year, towards the favor of discontinuing the usage of students’ test results for teacher evaluations. William Bushaw, executive director of PDK International and co-director of PDK/Gallup Poll also stated, “Americans’ mistrust of standardized tests and their lack of confidence and understanding around new education standards is one the most surprising developments we’ve found in years” (“Public Skeptical of Standardized Testing.”). All in all, not only are these tests a concern for students, who are forced to sit through them, hoping to get a decent enough score to place into a class, receive their diploma, or even get accepted to the college of their dreams, but they are a concern for parents as well, who only want the best for their children and to see them succeed.

Standardized testing has been around since the early 1900’s. Today, it determines a high school student’s future. Every year juniors in high school start to prepare months in advance for the SAT’s and ACT’s. Along with the test itself, comes stress that is not necessary. The debate of standardized tests defining a student’s academic ability or not has become a recent popular controversial topic. Many colleges and universities are starting to have test optional applications because they are realizing that a single test score does not demonstrate the knowledge of a student. There is more value in a student that should rule an acceptance or rejection. In the article, “SAT Scores Help Colleges Make Better Decisions” Capterton states, “The SAT has proven to be valid, fair, and a reliable data tool for college admission” (Capterton). Capterton, president of the College Board, believes that the SAT’s and ACT’s should be used to determine a student’s acceptance because it is an accurate measure. What Capterton and deans of admissions of colleges and universities don’t know is the abundant amount of resources upper class families have for preparation, the creative talents a student has outside of taking tests, and the amount of stress they put on a 17 year old.

Primarily, the article titled, “Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America?” it states, “The multiple-choice format used on standardized tests is an inadequate assessment tool. It encourages a simplistic way of thinking in which there are only right and wrong answers, which doesn't apply in real-world situations” (ProCon.org). There are numerous answers to the everyday simple problems that we, as humans, face. So, who is to say what answer is correct and what answer is not, when you have to read between the lines in a passage or article. Each student has a different point of view, and not always are they wrong. According to an article written by Thomas Armstrong it states, “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” (edge.ascd.org). This exhibits how the test does not provide any feedback of particular instruction on how to improve, so why take a test when you cannot even reflect off of your right and wrong answers? Also, according to an article written by Susannah Cahalan, it states, “Researchers studied the efficacy of the blots finding that they were worse at predicting job performance or academic success than report cards or even a short questionnaire” (nypost.com). This study shows that standardized testing, and ‘blots’, do not predict occupations effectively for maturing students. School is finding out what you want to do with the rest of your life, and taking a test that does not correspond with helping you find out what paths you should begin to lead down is not practical. However, many critics belief that standardized testing does accurately test the students and their capabilities. So,

Standardized testing has been ruling over the lives of students, making or breaking them in their education without fair judgement. Tests like the SAT and the ACT count for way too much when applying to colleges, which in turn limits the student 's capabilities to thrive in an environment that would benefit them. There are many problems within a standardized test that deems them to be unreliable as a true test of knowledge. Although designed to test groups of students on intelligence, standardized testing neglects to fairly acknowledge the abilities of each unique student which reflect their true capabilities.

The article claims that standardized tests ensures the best education possible for the students and provides three reasons of support. However, the lecture explains that these tests are not tools to help students or anyone and inhibit progress in shcools. She refutes each of the author’s reasons.

Most of test is just going to tell what students know on paper, but scores do not show what can an individual apply the knowledge in the real world. For instance, a person who has practice and invested their time on something and apply it in the real world is the one who's going to do well when it comes to who is actually is smart the one who has practice or the one that took the test and did good but is going to do bad because of the person that did not apply outside than a

Many students throughout the American education system struggle due to the fact that they have to take a standardized test. But, this struggle differs for each student, some are too lazy to take them while others are having difficulty performing well on these tests. As a student who learned English as a second language, I could relate with the people who are having trouble performing well on standardized tests. When I was in high school there was nothing more frightening than Standardized tests. There was a lot of emphasize on these tests and they had the power to determine my future in the means of deciding which colleges I could attend. But, I wasn’t alone in this matter, not all students perform to their potential on Standardized tests. No matter how hard I tried to study for these tests, I was just not doing as well as my class mates. It made me feel like I was beneath all my other class mates and I thought they were intellectually superior. But, I met other like me who were not good at taking test and didn’t perform well on these

“High school grades reflect years of effort and are more reliable assessment of college potential than test scores.” Historians detected that standardized testing started back in the seventh-century in China. The government of China began to organize written exams to select people for the civil service. Also many educators try to make sure that they are following the right requirements but some of them don’t and do all sorts of stuff with the results. Many individuals would say that standardized testing is a helpful way of learning from what the student knows and doesn’t, but the consequences that teachers found out of the standardized tests are making the students have a decrease in critical thinking.

Students are stressed. But, what is the goal of these tests? Are we trying to make students compete with one another to see who gets the higher score? Or are we preparing them for life outside of school? Maybe at one time these tests were used to measure how well the future leaders of our countries were learning, but now it is no longer like that. These tests seem to show no post-school value except to find the most successful kids and give them scholarships to college. Going along with this, everyone, depending on their grade, is required to take the same exact test. Despite their different ways of thinking, students are grouped together and the ones who are different are “wrong” simply because they were unable to learn it due to the way they were taught. Holding every single student to the same standards avoids the fact that everyone has a different mindset and each person may excel in different subjects. This poses a question: when will the system change? Students are held to such enormous pressure that when they meet the standards, they are convinced they’re stupid, and I struggle with this, too. However, it would be easier if all of the intimidation encountered when we are testing would just be withdrawn and students can be able to take a test, try their best, and if they don’t succeed, they can continue to work hard because, after all, a test shouldn’t determine how

Standardized tests do not give us a complete and direct measure of student achievement because they often only measure the goals of education(Harris). And while teachers and administration are forced to increase preparation for these tests, important -arguably more important - skills are being overlooked. Here are some attributes that standardized tests do not even try to cover: creativity, motivation, persistence, curiosity, reliability, critical thinking, self-awareness, leadership, civic-mindedness, empathy, courage, compassion, sense of beauty and wonder, honesty and integrity. Surely these are all “achievements” that students should be experiencing, so why don’t schools these as well as academic goals? Rochelle Gutiérrez, a member of The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics says "Achievement—all the outcomes that students and teachers attain. Achievement is more than test scores but also includes class participation, students' course-taking patterns, and teachers' professional development patterns"(Harris). These are all qualities that standardized tests cannot measure.

According to Turgut, educational tests have improved in its validity and reliability since the initial introduction of standardized tests (65). Parents and educators who have experienced tests and quizzes every class time believe that if given more exams, students would have to

To begin with standardized testing creates several critical problems for students and for the education industry. These tests are created to test over particular things. In the end these types of tests are only limited in the amount of knowledge that can be tested toward students. For example, “Standardized exams offer few opportunities to display the attributes of high-order thinking, such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and creativity.” (“Standardized Testing Has Serious Limitations”). Even though these tests are able to attack certain subjects at the core, they still leave out very valuable and critical information that all students should know. In