Arguments Against Standardized Testing

Tests, especially some standardized tests, not only make some students suffer from Neuro-psychentonia but also make teachers unable to handle the newly added knowledge in the tests that they even have not learned yet. Hence, truly effective standardized exams should test students’ understanding of the knowledge as well as their critical thinking instead of making standardized tests unreasonably tougher. And in order to buttress this perspective, the editor and publisher of The Nation Magazine: Katrina vanden Hevuel utilized many rhetorical appeals’ strategies to write her article “Stakes on standardized testing are too high,” which was published by The Washington Post. In the article, Hevuel displayed the uselessness and adverse aspects of improper standardized tests and emphasized her opinion that suitable and proper tests should truly focus on what students learned and how their teachers have been taught. Hevuel hopes her article can attract the attention of readers such as students, parents, and particularly educators and get their approval. Moreover, Hevuel

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.

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

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

I agree that standardized testing is fair, because it is the only way of knowing what students are learning. I believe that standardized testing is the best way of knowing if students across the country are learning what is being taught to them, and how they are being taught. If, everywhere else, students are achieving at a certain level, and in one area they are not performing as well as the others, then it allows us to look at what needs to be corrected in that area.

Standardized tests exist for administrative, political, and financial purposes, not for educational ones (institute4learning). Should teachers teach to a test? Are standardized tests worth the stress and anxiety they put upon students? All students don’t learn the same so, why test them the same. Standardized tests are damaging our education.

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.

The current uproar over standardized testing is being battled by cultural minorities who demand equality. “Cultural bias” refers to the idea that the differences between scores of racial and ethnic groups are caused by a bias towards the “American-born, English-speaking majority” of the US population. From the simple IQ test to the SAT, standardized testing has become an unfair predictor and artificial decision maker for this country’s minority, especially those newly immigrated. Economic and cultural biases leave for little opportunity for these examinees to perform well, partially because of the failure of the government to prepare and assimilate minority students.

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?

Our children are the most important resource in this Country. Our way of life could forever change, by the changes that are put into our schools by the federal government. The decline in meaningful learning because of the many standardized tests mandated, first accepted into our state from the federal government, which can degrade the lifestyle we enjoy today. “Standardized Tests measure only a small portion of what makes education meaningful”, and they are taking too much out of the learning time. This is detrimental to our children’s Education. Retired teachers and grandparents in a group called United Women’s Forum, meet every week. They are working to improve civic issues regarding the Education of our children. There is need for more

According to an article on the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's website, "Employing standardized achievement tests to ascertain educational quality is like measuring temperature with a tablespoon" (Popham). Standardized tests have been used throughout the U.S. for decades to rank schools and students; show progress; and determine eligibility for programs, colleges, etc. However, these tests should not be used at all, let alone for such important purposes. Although many wrongly disagree, standardized tests are overly stress-inducing, more challenging for certain groups, and preventing students from learning vital things in school.

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?

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).