Argumentative Essay On Standardized Testing

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 was put into place to provide extra money for children who do not have money while trading their knowledge using their test scores. The NCLB Act says that students are to be given yearly tests along with yearly report cards to track how well they are doing in school, in doing so, school is not about fun and socializing but now it is all business. These tests not only do not help the students learn but puts a load of stress on their shoulders, alongside that the tests have no purpose other than grading how well a students is able to retain information.

Test taking seems to be a negative aspect to every student’s life. No student is alone in the struggle to gain a good test score in order to get into the college of their choice because of their standardized test scores. They can do well in high school with a good GPA and put forth tons of effort but they may not good at taking tests. Some of it might be bad test anxiety or stressing out when the test is timed. Standardized testing is no longer a good indicator of college success because; standardized testing is biased against certain groups, testing adds too much stress to student lives, and impedes the assessment of other very important skills.

To many students standardized testing has become another part of schooling that is dreaded. Standardized testing has been a part of school since the nineteen-thirties; in those days it was used as a way to measure students that had special needs. Since the time that standardized test have been in American schools there has been many programs that have placed an importance on the idea of standardized testing such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Evans 1). Over the years the importance of standardized testing has increased tremendously and so has the stakes, not only for teachers but also students. All states in the United States of America have state test in order to measure how much students learn, and help tell how well the

Anyone who has ever taken the ACT or the SAT knows how stressful and difficult the tests are. Students are forever judged because of the scores the receive by colleges and peers. The ACT/SAT are standardized tests that are meant to calculate what students have learned in previous years of high school. Colleges then use this score to determine whether a student will succeed in college. Specific problems with this process include the fact that high schoolers are extremely busy and may have other things on their minds, the tests require brutal test prep, the test can cause stress and anxiety, and the tests do not accurately gage a student’s college success. For these main reasons, students should not be required to take the ACT/SAT to get into college.

College is right around the corner and senior year will soon be coming to a close. Over the years, I have been exposed to all sorts of standardized tests. Some of these I can prepare for, like the ACT, while others seem to throw some curveballs, like the MAP Assessment. Either way, both tests help measure and determine my ability as a student. No student looks forward to taking exams, but I understand why they are essential for evaluating students. Standardized tests allow colleges and teachers to measure student’s ability as well as push students to study and take things seriously. For this reason, I think the number of them should be maintained.

Students shouldn’t be measured by what they get on standardized test since it doesn’t show other things that the students are good at. The author wrote, “ Contrary to popular assumptions about standardized testing, the tests do a poor job of measuring student achievement. They fail to measure such important attributes as creativity and critical thinking skills.” (Opposing viewpoints in Context pg.1) The author’s main argument is that standardized tests do not show the other skill that students, schools or programs have that isn’t shown just through a test. That Standardized testing doesn’t effectively measure the achievement of students. In his or her article, the author puts what achievement is but what is based on standardized test and not other things. A lot of attributes are not measured from the standardized tests. There are some places that have rewards for “shallow thinking” (Opposing viewpoints Pg.3)

High school students across the United States stand by their mailboxes, waiting anxiously for the envelope containing the score that will seal their academic fate. College admission hinges on how well students perform in standardized testing. However, standardized testing has long-standing problems of bias, inaccuracy, coachability, and misuse. Because of these flaws, the college admission process places too much value on standardized test scores, such as the ACT and SAT, and are therefore insufficient predictors of a student’s potential and future success.

Since 1805 public schools have been the backbone of many Americans and their strive for an education. On top of this, public schools, according to the Huffington Post, equate to 91% or 50.7 million of those attending pre-Kindergarten through the 12th grade. But, with other school types such as year-round attending over 2 million students, the question begs, “Which school type provides their students with the best education”?

Those who were determined to enter the upper levels of the bureaucracy were to compete in the jinshi exams, a standardized testing method used to be used in a rudimentary form to determine one’s eligibility for positions in the government of the ruling class ("Chinese Civil Service"). Over past centuries, abundant countries and systems adopted this method to determine the success or failure within its set goals. The United States of America had adopted this method for its educational system as well and has no intention of having it revoked in the near future or possibly ever. The school boards in the United States strongly believes that the standardized testing system is able to provide a clear teacher-student evaluation and the overall school performance score ("Do Standardized Tests Show an Accurate View of Students’ Abilities?"). Although this may be the case, are the results honestly reliable? Studies and research has indicated that standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance (ProCon). A 2001 study published by the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-over-year test score improvements were temporary and "caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning…" (Olson, “Study Questions Reliability Of Single-Year Test-Score Gains”). This signifies that these tests are simply measuring only a small sample of the goals of education, which are necessarily broader and more inclusive than the test could possibly be. Due to this, the achievement in actual intelligence and the educational level “… can not properly assess, standardized tests inadvertently create incentives for students to become superficial thinkers—to seek the quick, easy, and obvious answer” (Harris, et al). How could America help aid the achievements and growth of the future generations if this is how the

Imagine you are a student, sitting at a common desk in a dull classroom. In front of you is an oversized timer seeming to dare you to feel the slightest bit of comfort in its presence. From atop your mountain of stress you stare intently at the standardized test that will have a say in your future as a student and as a functioning member of society. But despite your teacher’s plea for good test scores you start to wonder, do standardized tests effectively measure our abilities? Standardized tests do not effectively measure our abilities because they prevent teachers from individual teaching, do not reveal the true talents of students, and create the wrong curriculum for teaching.

If someone was to ask you “how do you define student achievement?” what would your answer be? Would you say student achievement is measured by state achievement tests? Or would you say that student achievement is too complex a subject to be objectively measured? There are many important skills students must be taught, and we need a way to effectively measure if they are in fact learning those skills. However, standardized tests cannot effectively show the learning of all students, especially those that are not good test takers. And of those skills that are tested, there are an endless number of arguably more important skills that aren’t being valued because they cannot be calculated. Furthermore,

Tomorrow was the big day. The day that every student despised, but came every year. The problem that transcends national borders: standardized testing. Before I knew it, it was the final week, and time was running out. In my case, the Connecticut state test, the CMT, was in just two days. More than nervousness, there was a cloud of confusion surrounding this test for us students. Some said that preparation and study are necessary for this test, while most thought just the opposite. Some people were even saying that the scores for these tests somehow will affect our progress in school. Looking back, I don’t remember the test being all that hard, but it didn’t make sense to me. How could this one test, filled with questions that require shallow thinking and zero creativity, show the state the performance of my hard-working teachers, or the individuality and strengths of each student? Or on a larger scale, every student in the entire state?

Standardized tests were created during the First World War as a tool to measure the “intellect, ability, and potential” of the soldiers in the army (Turgut 64-65). From World War I to the launch of Sputnik I by the Soviet Union, standardized tests were used to enable development and have aided in progress of a country. Standardized tests have also been introduced into the education system to measure the student’s intelligence in a subject.

What’s your ACT score? Students are branded with their ACT and SAT scores in society. Today’s education is heavily leaning on standardized tests. An average students takes over one hundred standardized tests in his or her school years. Standardized tests are used to measure and test the knowledge of students in a particular subject in a quick and easy way. These tests are also used to see the extend and skill of students for qualifications of certain colleges and scholarships. Some of these standardized tests include the ACT and the SAT. But do these test fully measure the strength of knowledge these students have practiced for their whole lives? Standardized testing does not allow students to fully and completely show their strength in education and instead results in breaking down students mentally and physically.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of students across the nation are required to take many standardized tests. Which are used to determine student’s achievement, progress and growth. These tests supposedly say the outcome of how much knowledge a student has or has not learned. The stakes are high all because of a test score. Standardized tests may determine a pass or fail status for grade levels through K-12 or admission into colleges if you are taking an ACT or SAT standardized test. It is unfair and a very unreliable method to use to measure the performance of students. Standardized testing methods creates more harm than good and should be revised because many students, teachers, and schools suffer from this annually.