Arguments Against Standardized Testing

Currently, standardized tests do not improve the education of students in America. Standardized testing is not an accurate measure of student’s knowledge because they are designed to test an extremely broad amount of students who do not have the same educational background. This makes it incredibly difficult to test students across the world on the same level and expect their scores to reflect their education. Standardized testing, by definition, is any test containing the same questions that is administered to a vast group of people for the purpose of comparing different student’s test scores. This issue is important because it affects the entire academic community, positively and negatively. Therefore, all teachers, students, school staff, and test administrators have some involvement with standardized testing. The vast majority of people in America have taken a standardized test sometime in their life, which makes these tests vital in the

Standardized tests take away the creativity from the teachers forcing them to "teach to the test" this means memorizing

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.

According to education researcher Gregory J. Cizek, these tests are not helping the child. They’re hurting them. He knows that teacher need to show off what their students know, but he just doesn't understand why we have to do these tests. He can tell by his work that more than half of kids have an anxiety toward testing. The student may know a lot, but will freeze during the test. “Standardized testing can create a lot of stress for both educators and students. Excellent teachers quit the profession every day because of how much stress is on them. Students especially feel the pressure when there is something meaningful tied to them. In Oklahoma, high school students must pass four standardized tests in various areas, or they do not earn a diploma, even if their GPA was a 4.00. The stress this can cause on a teenager is not healthy in any way,” he states. His plan is to show people that this is a wrong thing to do and is unhealthy for both educators and the

“There is something deeply hypocritical in a society that holds an inner-city child only eight years old "accountable" for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years before,” quote Jonathan Kozol. As this quote apptly states many children are often robbed of simple childhood pleasures by standardized testing. These strenuous tests should be cut back to the absolute minimum. Standardized tests should not be required because they provide unnecessary stress, are often inaccurate because of computer and human error, and some students, particularly minorities, are at a clear disadvantage.

“When we began the map test I knew my students were gonna dread it, I myself dread it, and I am not even taking it. So I decided how about a reward for these kids, if you got above your past score you got 7 extra credit points for the test, which made a lot kids eager to get a good score. They went to sleep early, read before bed, and got a good meal beforehand, everything the test recommends the students to do before taking it. These kids fully ready to take it, mindset clear. When they got their scores back most were shocked because the did not score the same or higher, they got a lower score. All across the room I saw devastated faces because they wouldn’t receive their 7 extra points, and all their hard work was a complete waste. I decided to start an investigation so I called the test company and explained the situation and the only thing they told me was ‘well maybe they lied to you.’ this could not be true, 90% of these kids were A average students in an honors class.

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

Standardized testing has been a major debate for over sixteen years and is still going on in some districts all over the United States. The debate is over who agrees with having standard tests in their schools and who doesn’t, although it’s mostly parents and guardians rather than students who are debating this. There are many pro’s and con’s to having standard tests in schools such as the student is too stressed to be motivated to do their work properly or perhaps it could be because the student suffers from depression whereas on the other hand, teachers are being able to tell where a student is truly at in the course and can help them get back on track and understand what it is that they are learning.

Standardized tests are critical to our nation’s education system as they hold teachers and schools accountable to students, parents, and taxpayers, are perceived as generally fair, and contain some critical thinking and creative merit.

Imagine yourself stuck in a room, sitting at a desk. On that desk is a test booklet labeled “Standard Test,” with no other writing. It’s a 100 question test trying to wring every last bit of information you can remember from the past year. It’s very stressful, and frankly, very useless. Standardized tests have only proved to be useful for cramming knowledge into children's heads, and education is something more. Standardized tests are simply useless for proving what education is truly about.

It is hard to test a student on what they truly know based on standardized tests. People learn in many different ways; standardizing curriculum and classrooms puts people at a disadvantage who may learn better in a different way. Test anxiety is also factor that plays a prominent role in the outcome of test scores. Standardized tests discriminate against people who lack test taking abilities. A student can know the information, but be a bad test taker; they will appear to be less of a scolar than someone who is very good at test taking and it is not from lack of effort. Standardized test are use largely when it comes to applying for college. Colleges determine the acceptance of a student into their school based on their grades (the performance of students in the determined curriculum) and their test scores (large standardized test with a narrow view of student skill sets). Students who struggle with standardization are left to either learn how to thrive in this learning environment or to fail and fall to standardized tests; this can interfere with their futures. Standardization determines whether someone passes or fails and it is an insufficient measure of student

Standardized tests have being a controversial topic ever since they started implementing them as a mandatory assessment. I strongly disagree with this type of evaluation for obvious reasons. As a modern day student I’m utterly aware of how potentially frustrating a test can be. In this matter, taking standardized tests not only affects students, but also helicopter parents. Complaints have recently risen the past years against having to take this tests and this idea has also been enforced by former president Barrack Obama which handed out his personal opinion about this controversial assessment claiming it was a waste of time. It is understandable the reasons why government’s education department is prone to defend this protocol,

Standardized tests are used for measuring a student’s ability to retain information throughout the school year. Going to school should be more than just how well a student did on a test it should be getting them ready to go to college or to start working. In the classroom environment, students should be using what they have learned and applying it to their life. They should not just be learning it and moving on. Students feel the need to just learn the info because they have to pass a test, then forget about what they learned. The excessive high-stakes testing obsession that has marched into our classrooms through federal and state mandates has decimated the love of learning for millions of children (Deutermann). Not only has it affected the way students learn in high school, but it will also affect the way they will learn in college. In college, students should want to learn so that way they can try different classes to figure out what they want to major in. With all of the tests that students take throughout the years of school, affects the way they learn and will affect their outcome in

The debate on standardized tests and its adequacy in testing a student’s knowledge about a subject has been going on for many years. Tests, in general, has been around for centuries and without them there would not be progress and no gleams of progress. Students ranging from elementary school to high school have experienced standardized testing. Teachers, educators, and parents are also involved in the students’ lives, which revolves around the tests, one way or another. There are many views on standardized test. However, the three most common views are: educators who are for standardized test which benefits students, educators who are at the other extreme of opposing standardized tests, and educators who view tests are a benefit if done in appropriate amounts.

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