Arguments Against Standardized Testing

Would you like to take a test that is unfair, expensive, and unreliable? Chances are you already have. Standardized testing in schools is not only bad for the students, but also bad for our country’s future. Some might think standardized testing is a good thing, because it is the only way to measure all students the same across the country. However, this thought is wrong for many reasons.

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.

Standardized tests are often unfair to a wide range of students. Students coming from high-poverty schools often have fewer resources and weaker teachers (Layton A1). “People are sick of the overkill of test volume and the consequences, ridiculous things like rating art teachers based on the reading test scores in their schools” quote Robert Schaeffer (Layton A1). “Fort Myers, Florida, gives 183 tests during the year!” quote Sen. Patty Murray (Layton A1). There is many ways students can be evaluated more

“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.

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

Most kids might not ever believe that parents don't like test either.Some parents do not like standardized testing, they think that it is to much.The argument between standardized testing is getting hot.Some parents think that we should have standardized testing,but i personally think that we do need testing because the district needs to know if we are learning what we need to be learning or if we are learning anything at all,also to depict if we move on to our next grade also for us to know what we are learning ourselves.

The American educational system has proven to be insufficient in training our children to be well rounded citizens. With so much emphasis placed upon standardized testing, there is little room for personal growth and individuality; instead, our current classroom design forces kids to remain in a box rather than teaching them how to work with their strengths and weaknesses as individuals. With so much emphasis placed upon memorization and drilling, important aspects of childhood development, such as critical thought and the cultivation of creativity, have been abandoned. Rather than instilling a sense of accomplishment and motivation in our students, the educational system has become a force of fear as futures are determined by a test score.

The chart above posted by Zachary Goldfarb on the Washington Post further shows that if a student’s family is more affluent, that student is likely to do better. If standardized testing is going to test students as equals, then all the prep material should be made available for all students no matter what income level a student’s family is in.

We hate standardized tests. We hate how boring they are. We hate how much pressure that comes with them. And most of all, we hate how they only measure how well we can take a test.

As a graduate student in a doctoral program, I have a fair share of standardized testing experience. Never have I been exceptionally great on standardized tests but have always willed myself to reach whatever benchmark I was challenged to accomplish. Coming from a home where Spanish was the first language and my parents barely had more than a middle-school level education, I had to discover ways to overcome academic and testing difficulties. Statistically, it is well documented that many of our country’s diverse learners have trouble positively representing themselves on standardized tests for a plethora of reasons; I can attest to this from first hand experience. From language barriers that cause deficiencies in vocabulary development to deficient levels of formal education in the homes, the barriers often compound to enormous heights for children from low-socioeconomic statuses and/or those where English is a second language within the home. Regardless of these facts, testing will continuously remain to be an accountability system that is vital in education. Although, in education we often fall short by using tests and data as the ultimate answer when it can be used for so much more. Through technology and assessment, the ability to pinpoint every single deficiency that student’s have is completely possible. Rather than using testing as the answer, educators must become better at understanding how to use testing as a tool. Furthermore, when stronger testing platforms and protocols can be created and implemented, the more our educational

Through the creation of the No Child Left Behind initiative in 2001, the government started requiring every state to set content standards for each grade level, as well as develop ways to assess student progress with meeting specified standards (Guide,22). The amount of standardized tests in schools have increased, but not everyone shares the belief that they are effective to students’ overall learning. Therefore, the purpose of this research, is to answer some of the toughest questions regarding standardized testing which include, is standardized testing an effective measurement of student ability? As well as, is standardized testing beneficial to students?

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 the United States, children usually start school between the age five the six. Children will be in elementary from kindergarten through fifth grade and in third grade students are introduced to standardized testing. Standardized testing is... There are reasons to why this is a problem. The educational system is supposed to help and teach and prepare you for your future career, not standardized tests. Test scores shouldn’t determine the intelligence of the students are or how much they have learned.

This issue of standardized testing is an ongoing debate that has been argued about for decades, with strong support coming from both sides. These assessments are used all across the national education system to evaluate educational performance. Some believe that they are a vital resource for success, while others view them as a predisposed technique in assessing intelligence. Standardized testing is an inaccurate method of measuring a student’s intellectual abilities because it fails to present students with the content they have been taught and are familiar with, it restricts students with its limited subject matter, and it only measures knowledge based on a student’s ability to memorize proficiently.

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