Arguments Against Standardized Testing

The Latino minority was now the majority. Of these new citizens, many are immigrants in search of affordable housing. For a typical immigrant, jobs are scarce and lead most of the residents in my city to settle for minimum wage jobs resulting in a low median income. The low socioeconomic status of the citizens played a pivotal role on the education of the children who grew up in this oppressed neighborhood. There was a staggering drop of 28.8% of students who graduated high school and/or pursued higher education from 1990 to 2010. This drop was result of the low expectations the education system primed on the students from a very young age. Since many come from immigrant parents their first language might not necessarily be English. Tracking then took place, separating the few who were fortunate enough to have prior knowledge of the “native language” and those who need extra help and were held back for their inability to speak English. Ramon and Hunt touch on the topic of schools lack of support, specifically schools under LAUSD; my home district. The education received at schools like mine were not up to par in comparison to schools white and Asian Americans attended; it did not provide the same highly certified teachers or varied class selection (Ramon, Hunt 387). Lack of support puts many at a disadvantage including myself who had to persist regardless of all the barriers tunneling my

“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.

Throughout history, Americans excel in pronounced innovations for society. An important part of American culture comes from its education system. Large sums of American citizens attend public schools in order to prepare themselves for their careers and to better our society. This being said, schools play a crucial element in developing citizens, and should be a top priority for our society. Initial standardized tests were introduced to assess student performance, over the past two decades, however the school system has become consumed with endless testing. Some of these tests dubbed as “Do or die tests”, due to the vast impact the success or failure of a single test on an individual student. The issue isn’t the test themselves, but how much

Standardized testing is an overemphasized aspect of the modern education system. All states use some form of standardized testing, and in recent years, it has become a deciding factor in a student’s ability to graduate. But, how effective are these tests? They aren’t. They don’t test a student’s aptitude, they only test the ability for a student to hold information, not apply it. State testing must be removed on the grounds that it inhibits the critical thinking abilities of younger generations, and it misrepresents a student’s aptitude for learning.

Yellow, Black and White. These colors along with countless others are what make up the student population of America’s schools in the 21st century. Each and every color is a student filled with boundless potential to succeed and flourish in the world beyond school. Yet, why is it that some students seem stand out above the rest despite having the seemingly same education? This is the problem of the achievement gap in America in our education system today. There has been an influx of various ethnic groups into the education system resulting

Even in the twenty-first century, the ever-present education gap between minority and white students continues to exist. Children from wealthy areas continue to come out on top in testing and college attendance. In minority schools and areas where students have a poor upbringing, basic knowledge is not passed down and the schools are not adapted to the rigorous national standardized testing (Clark). However, over the years there has been signs of improvement. “The black high school graduation rate has more than doubled since 1960.

Fact Sheet: Testing Action Plan. Federal Information & News Dispatch. ProQuest Research Library, search.proquest.com/docview/1726842708?accountid=6222. Accessed 27 Oct. 2016. This article provides knowledge on how standardized tests are shaped and organized, and how they affect students, especially minorities. This article explains that standardized tests can have positive effects if they are organized the correct way and taught the information in class because “students do best on high-quality assessments that actually measure critical thinking and complex skills when they have been exposed to strong instruction”. This article also emphasizes the fact that standardized tests can be very time consuming, and that they are unfair

Although the aforementioned statement is specifically about social studies, analogous comparisons can be made regarding the significance of the other subjects. For instance, the disregard of science in school standardized tests may detract from a student’s sense of curiosity or awareness and ability to discover new information. Correspondingly, neglecting the artistic portion of school testing could take away from student creativity, inventive thinking, and cultural awareness (Bryant). In other words, when standardized tests overlook supplementary areas of knowledge, it narrows the focus on the specific subjects or contents that are covered and consequently limits the test taker’s potential gain in individual understanding. Anya Kamenetz,

Tests of children in grade two are possibly to be unpredictable. Therefore, the test grades for early children are much less consistent than for elder children. Research clearly displays that for children under fourth grade, the method of taking tests and responding on specialized answer sheets can show more demanding than the perceptive tasks the tests are requesting them to report. Thus the test results are too much prejudiced by children's capacity to fill in bubbles and handle pieces of paper; too little determined by their capacity to delivered. This position paper outlines reasons to oppose standardized testing of second graders, plus the effects on teachers and schools, and then suggests the Early Literacy Assessment.

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

Language barriers can make getting a job very difficult for people who immigrate to the U.S. Immigrant children’s education experience can later influence their future career “The demands of standardized testing often force schools instead to emphasize rote learning in English, neglecting the incredible asset of children’s native languages and much of what researchers have discovered about how children learn second languages.” (Tamer 4). Standardized testing is a very important part of a student's academic career, but immigrant children have it much harder than native children. This is due to the fact that standardized testing is in English and a majority of immigrant

Because of the pressure on the teachers, they would focus more on teaching students how to take the tests rather than what they are supposed to teach in terms of academic achievements (Sacks 44). Standardized testing seems to turn these schools into the ones only for testing. Another issue with standardized testing is that it does not fit every race of students equally well. In Michele Phillips’s article, “Standardized Tests Aren’t Like T-Shirts: One Size Doesn’t Fit All,” Phillips claims that standardized tests are unfair to the students who don’t have English as their primary language. Moreover, standardized tests seem biased because they’re under the standard of the norms of White middle-class America (Phillips). Due to these linguistic and cultural differences, standardized testing is merely a challenge rather than an encouragement to students who are not in the White upper and middle- class groups. Both Sacks and Phillips claim that in order to help these students to succeed academically, reducing standardized testing is needed. Decreasing standardized testing will reduce the negative effects that it brings which will then improve the equality of the American schools and help the students from lower classes and minority races to be more comfortable with studying.

With these standardized tests being a “knowledge analyzer” limits the urge of learning all the material. The main focus of most students is to pass the tests, making only certain parts of the material important to focus on. But, the focus is not only on the criteria in these test booklets. When is the last time a test was seen in a language other than English? This is a discrimination against foreign students, how could this possibly be fair? Also,what if the individual is not a test taker? What if the individual does not have the extra money to get the extra help needed to succeed? As you can see, there can be many complaints made about these standardized tests. These biased, discriminatory standardized tests should not determine an individual’s future and is not an accurate measurement of one’s knowledge or academic

By the year 2060, minorities, now at 37 percent of the U.S. population, are projected to comprise 57 percent of the population. The total minority population would more than double, from 116.2 million to 241.3 million over the period (U.S. Census, 2012). The U.S. Census has projected the U.S. to become a majority-minority nation for the first time by 2043. Disparities in test scores start early as kindergarten and persist throughout 12th grade (US News, 2015). According to Forum on Child and Family Statistics, African American students score lower than White counterparts in reading, mathematics, science cognitive flexibility and approaches to learning (US News, 2015). These statistics demonstrate the diverse landscape and disparities in the

Even though the United States of America has seemingly grown from its conflicted past, there is still racial division abound and it is starting with education. According to Jeffery Young and his paper, Researches Charge Racial Bias on the SAT, we are shown that the SAT is made in such a way that it favors white test takers rather than being an overall fair test. It has been shown that on some question, “white test takers consistently pick the right answer, while black and Hispanic student trip up” and on other questions the minority groups tend to perform better than the white test takers (Racial bias, 1). Combine these questions with the Educational Testing Services, ETS, rules for building a standardized test, “the only questions that end up on the SAT are ‘white-preference’ questions” or at least according to Jay Rosner, who is the executive director of the Princeton Review Foundation, a program that’s seeks to help the more impoverished students with their standardized testing scores (Racial Bias, 1). Rosner