Arguments Against Standardized Testing

Throughout high school and college we will go through a vast amount of testing but why? Testing is used to show a person’s amount of knowledge on a particular subject. Usually it’s for one specific subject and not a majority of them, standardized tests administered in schools today include all testable subjects as in English, Math, Science, Writing, and Reading. However, before we can all take the next step and begin our college careers, we have to take one of two tests, the ACT or the SAT. These two exams demine the college you get into, the amount of scholarships you will receive, and even whether or not your will be accepted into said college, all determined by the score you receive.

It is true that standardized tests are being used to evaluate whether our schools are doing their jobs. Our schools prepare our students for life in the workforce and college. If we do take away standardized testing, it will seem as though we have no way to evaluate our schools by, but the fact is we already have a way. What is it that students are typically evaluated by? Their volunteer work? Their extracurricular activities? Their clubs? Students are typically evaluated by their grade point average. Scholarships, school rank, and colleges take GPA into account. Everything that is important to a high school student, scholarships, school rank, and college, is in some way determined by their GPA. Some corporations use GPA as a cut-off point

America’s educational system could improve nationally by removing standardized testing. American has recognized some of the flaws the education system has presented and chose to fix them; however, one of these problems has been standardized testing, which has not been identified nor changed. Standardized testing inflicts many problems to students that need to be fixed immediately. From inefficient teachers to poorer school systems, standardized testing needs to change because it deteriorates America’s education systems, it is an unfair disadvantage, and it cannot accurately measure a student’s amount of intelligence.

I one hundred percent agree with this, we should stop caring about standardized testing as that just adds more pressure to those that care much more than others about their future. I for one care enough to be successful in my life but I don’t want to have to depend on a great testing grade to judge my success. The SAT and ACT, in my opinion before this article, useless to me.

me people considers that Standardized Testing can’t sufficiently assess students’ potential. They describe that the tests restrict creativity, fail to give every student a fair chance, and are not able to comprehensively analyze a student’s future. Nevertheless, as a student of my generation, I can look around the circumstances and my fellow contemporaries, and find that Standardized Testing is the best way for now to assess a student’s potential. This point of view will be supported by the following paragraphs.

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’s stupid.” Recently, there has been discussion about whether the method of standardized testing is best for our education system. There are a lot of flaws that come with the system of testing. Opposers argue that with all of the flaws, the testing significantly holds American citizens back from greater potential to success. Standardized testing weakens America’s education system, because it can cause teachers to “teach to the test”, does not truly measure intelligence or abilities, and cannot always reflect what a student has learned.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Nobel Prize winning Physicist Albert Einstein, former Vice President Dick Cheney, light bulb inventor Thomas Edison, Oscar winning director Steven Spielberg, creative genius Walt Disney, and Steve Jobs, the visionary behind Apple; these iconic figures are often associated with genius, but were viewed as “slow” or “dumb” during school. These individuals were expelled or dropouts of school, because they were not meeting standards. After years of failing in school, these people went on to revolutionize the world, while inspiring many others to make a difference.

Joseph Joubert, a wise French writer, once stated, “It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debate.” Although this was stated years ago, his wise words are still relevant today. Standardized testing is just one of the many topics causing great controversy among society. The reason behind this uproar is due to the contradicting opinions of government officials, school district administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Each group has different opinions they are passionate about, however the central argument is whether or not standardized testing should continue to be used as an evaluation tool.

Education is an integral part of any society, and assessing the needs and improvement of students is an important part of any education, however, is constant testing the right way to do it? In this essay I will be exploring the world of testing, specifically the famous standardized test, the good and the bad, the uses and the alternatives. Did we as a society stumble upon the best, most effective way to assess the ability and improvement of our children? Could we implement a better way to help all children reach their full potential? Standardized tests equalize things for students, when not all students learn in the same ways. Does it accomplish more than ranking our nation's children?

Education is saturated with standardized testing. Standardized testing is throughout your whole educational career, starting with the MAP test and ending with an ACT or SAT test. The curriculum in the classroom is molded to fit test taken by each student while teachers teach to the test. According to Council of Great City Schools, “as of 2016, the average student in America takes a staggering 112 mandatory standardized tests before graduating high school.” Standardized testing is defined as same test student take under similar conditions with criteria for multiple choice or short answer questions. College are examining on test score to decide student’s future in education. “Unfortunately we cannot accept you due to your lack of testing ability” is the last thing any college student wants to hear. High School students, who already have responsible for choosing a college, a career, and focussing on school work, have to focus on one more thing that should not even be factored to college, standardized test like the ACT or SAT. If you score high enough on the MAP test, you have opportunities to achieve in advanced classes in future classes that could help for college. If

In most of the countries students are expected to take standardized exams before completing their high school education. In America, students take ACT, a standardized exam which measures students’ ability to move forward for college. They generally tests students on their knowledge in English, Math, and Science. Each section has its own points, and the overall score is the average score of all sections. But are standardized exams really standardized? And can it measure every student’s ability correctly? I argue that standardized exams are not really standardized and it is not fair to every student who is taking these tests. The main reasons which make standardized tests unstandardized and unfair are the improper distribution of content, purely

Standardized testing is over powering conversation across America. Standardized testing is a test in which is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. It is most commonly used to measure students’ progress and success. Most students of all grades through high school have some form of standardized testing.

Since the 1980’s, US students have been falling well behind students in other industrialized nations in terms of knowledge and education. The US is losing its ability to create a quality education for the majority of its students. The government has attempted to combat this by introducing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002, then replacing that with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2016. Nonetheless, these laws have failed in their attempts to improve education and have implemented rigorous amounts of testing rather than fixing the education system. They have created a flawed testing system, applied too harsh of punishments on under-performing schools, and harmed disadvantaged students. The fact that these problems exist is

Standardized testing, by definition, is “any form of test that requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from a common bank of questions, 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.” Indicating that every group of test-taking pupils are graded on the same sets of skills, this definition suggests that such exams hinder one’s ability to use their imagination as only one correct answer exists. Due to this rigidness, an increasing amount of criticism arises, claiming that this system negatively affects students. Lewis Carroll’s famous heroine, Alice Kingsleigh, conjures up an

In fact, one student, when asked about standardized testing, mentioned that “testing felt like such a waste,” and that the material covered on the exams “felt really irrelevant and disconnected from what we were doing in class” (Rizga & Hernandez, 2015). Standardized tests do not allow students to freely express themselves and their intriguing, creative imagination, which makes it impossible for a student to show who they truly. Even researchers agree that “teachers and school administrators should resist the urge to rely too heavily on the results from state-mandated standardized tests or any one test” (Tienken, 2015).