Are Standardized Tests Measure Students?

Most standardized test do not measure emotional or mechanical intelligence, actually a lot of educators argue that standardized test do not measure comprehension or actual intelligence but rather memorization. While others may believe that standardized testing just needs a few improvements, others believe that it is impossible to have a test that measures accurately the capability of a diverse student population. Today’s schooling depends heavily on the test scores from standardized test. Standardized testing should not have so much weight put on them because they have a negative impact on effective education, students’ self-concept, and learning styles.

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.

Standardized testing is not made to test every student. These tests often ask one sided, bias questions. Claims have been brought against standardized tests in court due to bias. How are they supposed to measure the ability of every student when every student is different? Students learn differently and preform differently depending upon the type of test given. Some students are stronger with essay questions, some with matching, and some with true and false. Some students could not even know the material but get a multiple choice question right through process of elimination. How is this a fair way to measure knowledge? It is not fair to the students that actually study for these tests and know the information required.

The use of standardized testing to measure students’ knowledge is an inaccurate reflection of their capabilities. By being forced to take a test that does not effectively show their abilities, students become overstressed, and the tests themselves do not promote true academic achievement. Rather than learning about subjects in order to gain knowledge, students simply memorize facts and formulas to get a decent test score. Standardized tests are not an appropriate measure of student performance, only benefit certain groups of students, and do not prepare students for the real world.

This is in fact not the case, there are an abundant number of alternatives to standardized assessments. Alternatives to determined how a school performs according to "Do Standardized Tests Show an Accurate View of Students' Abilities" are "high school graduation rates and number of dropouts, enrollments in advanced placement and other college prep courses, college acceptance rate, and college remediation rates for recent high school graduates" (6). As previously mentioned by the research the Hampshire College performed there are also alternatives for accepting students into colleges that are not test scores. Some possible choices are essays and interviews, recommendations from mentors, and assess factors such as their community engagement and entrepreneurism. The main point is that these standardized tests can be replaced with better options of where to place schools and students on the overall

Michelle Obama once said, “If my future were determined by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.” Standardized testing is, “any form of test that requires all test takers to answer the same questions, in the same way, and that is scored in a “standard” or consistent manner” (edglossary.org, Standardized Test). Standardized testing is used in most schools and is used to determine the futures of many student’s educations. These tests usually have sets of multiple choice, or true or false questions that are to be answered within a limited amount of time. Many people think that this is the only way to accurately measure a student’s individual intelligence. Even though almost all schools make students

Any child that is in any type of schooling knows what standardized testing is. It is required in every state of America, and not a single child likes it. In recent years a controversial issue has been weather or not standardized testing should be used to judge a person’s intelligence. On one hand, many people believe that standardized testing should not be used because they say it is not a good way to judge a person’s real-world intelligence. On the other hand, however, others argue that standardized testing is an excellent way to predict a person’s intelligence.

These tests, which in theory, are intended to judge a student’s growth and/or proficiency over time, in reality only measure how well a student is prepared for that specific test and not the actual material that is taught in the classroom. Standardized tests are for the most part aptitude tests, which sound beneficial, as they are evaluating a student’s ability to learn, but which actually measure how well the students can perform on a mind-numbing test that is most often not even loosely related to what

I agree with Rachel's post because she mad a lot of valid points. She explains how standardized testing is a sort of equalizer that fairly tests every student. In addition, she explained that while testing standards are good, there are some important drawbacks. One being that the standards are vague and this difficult to implement. This also poses an issue in how students are prepared for standardized testing; are they taught important concepts or are they taught how to take the test? Rachel made a great point when she explained that some aspects of the PARCC testing are online and so students must have some form of computer literacy to complete them. For students who don't have access to a computer or wireless internet, they may struggle with

Standardized tests should not be used to judge the education of a student. The students’ scores on these tests do not provide an accurate index of educational effectiveness (Ascd). A student may know the topic very well, but when it comes to testing over it they may not do so well. A lot of students’ have issues when taking tests and that is not their fault. Educational quality made on the basis of students standardized test performances is apt to be invalid (Ascd). When making the test and grading the test mistakes can be made. Whether it is the test makers marking the wrong answer and not know they did or an error when grading. Students know how much these tests affect their future lives so they do anything, cheat, or take performance drugs,

Standardized tests do not give an accurate measure of how smart students are, and in some cases, how not smart they are. A student with test anxiety could completely fail an important standardized test but could be the valedictorian of their class because they are so smart. The tests that seem important actually just stress teachers and students out instead of helping them. “The tests that are taken should not be portrayed to be as important as Advanced Placement tests.” “Not many people pass the AP tests, so they should not be expected to pass the standardized tests,” (Concordia University).

At the beginning of the school system, many changes have been made. Standardized testing, however, is a part of the school system that has not been changed in very many ways, and has very many problems with it. With the many problems that standardized testing has, it should be removed from the school system all together.

No one’s future should be determined by a test. Many colleges accept students based on their test scores. Standardized test does not accurately measure student’s ability to think or learn. These tests are unfair to bad test takers, people with test anxiety, and people that weren’t encouraged to excel.

It is true that standardized test can be used to compare students and measure students’ achievement, but standardized tests may not be as valuable as many people think it is. College Board announced that starting in 2016, the SAT will be redesigned giving more evidence that standardized tests are not to be heavily looked at while considering accepting a student for college or scholarships, therefore, I believe that standardized tests are a waste of time

To begin with, multiple articles have confirmed that standardized tests do not measure a child’s intelligence. In order to first understand why, we should begin with defining what a standardized test actually is.“A standardized test is any form of test that requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from a common bank in the same way, and is scored in a “standard” or consistent manner, which makes it possible to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of students.” Simply from reading what a standardized test actually is, we can find many faults in the way that these tests are used in today’s schools: Using our current education system, schools are comparing the scores of all students in the same manner, as if every student thinks, learns, and tests in the same way as their peers and are identical to one another.