Essay On Standardized Testing In Schools

Pressure to succeed at these tests creates feelings of anxiousness and stress in students that can cause students to dread coming to school at all. Students should be able to enjoy coming to school and learning. Pressure from standardized tests does not allow students to further their education in a stress-free environment. This can be detrimental to the quality of education. Dawn Laborde is a mother of three school-aged children from Florida. She said, “My third grader loves school, but I can’t get her out of the car this year.” (“States Listen as Parents Give Rampant Testing an F”) This demonstrates how even children as young as eight or nine years old can feel the pressures given by standardized testing. It is worrying that young children and teenagers are spending so much of their time in school agonizing over standardized tests and other concerns that accompany them. The pressure to succeed at these tests can also cause students to feel physically ill. Education researcher Gregory J. Cizek states, “...illustrating how testing...produces crippling anxiety in even the brightest students and makes young children vomit, or cry, or both.” (“Is The Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America?”) The fact that students are brought to tears or made physically sick due to stress from testing is very disturbing. Schools should be relaxed environments where students can freely learn and grow

Standardized tests are unnecessary because they are excruciating to the minds of many innocent students. Each year, the tests get tougher and stricter until the students cannot process their own thoughts. The tests become torturous to the minds of those only starting in the world of tests. The students already battling in the war are continuing to fall deeper and deeper into the world of uncreativity and narrowness. As the walls narrow in on them, they are lost and unable to become innovative thinkers. Moreover, the implementation of standardized tests into the public school systems of the United States of America has controversially raised two different views –the proponents versus the opponents in the battle of the effectiveness of

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

Students are stressed. But, what is the goal of these tests? Are we trying to make students compete with one another to see who gets the higher score? Or are we preparing them for life outside of school? Maybe at one time these tests were used to measure how well the future leaders of our countries were learning, but now it is no longer like that. These tests seem to show no post-school value except to find the most successful kids and give them scholarships to college. Going along with this, everyone, depending on their grade, is required to take the same exact test. Despite their different ways of thinking, students are grouped together and the ones who are different are “wrong” simply because they were unable to learn it due to the way they were taught. Holding every single student to the same standards avoids the fact that everyone has a different mindset and each person may excel in different subjects. This poses a question: when will the system change? Students are held to such enormous pressure that when they meet the standards, they are convinced they’re stupid, and I struggle with this, too. However, it would be easier if all of the intimidation encountered when we are testing would just be withdrawn and students can be able to take a test, try their best, and if they don’t succeed, they can continue to work hard because, after all, a test shouldn’t determine how

Although standardized testing has been a major part of schooling it has also had a negative impact on effective education. Standardized has made a huge impact on public schooling so much that not only does it affect the students but also the teachers. With the teachers now beginning to get raises or having their jobs on the line if their students fail the test, many students have not been getting the fullest education process that they could get. Students may not realize the impact that it has had on the type of teaching style that they receive because they are so used to it. With so many teachers not having a lot of time to teach what is on the test and the other things that they feel are important to students to know, a lot of

Clammy hands, extreme anxiety, and increased heart rate are all symptoms that occur along side standardized tests. Standardized tests have found their way into the center of American education. These achievement tests are used to determine a student’s performance in particular content areas for a certain school year. The student’s scores are then cross referenced to the scores of all other students that took the same test (Haladyna). Many students work hard during their educational careers, only to do poorly on a standardized test and lose their chances at being accepted into any decent college. Standardized tests are not beneficial to the student nor to the teacher and are sometimes even harmful. Students should be given standardized tests less frequently and educators should place less emphasis on scores students receive on these tests. Standardized exams favor upper-class majority students, decrease the quality of public education, and ineffectively measure a student’s achievement.

There are too many external factors that could influence a child’s test score, yet, we’ve allowed standardized testing to determine a child’s future. “For example, test anxiety has grown into a subfield of educational psychology, and its prevalence means that the tests producing this reaction are not giving us a good picture of what many students really know and can do.” (Kohn, 2000) The high amount of value American society places on standardized testing can cause a high amount of anxiety, which can be associated with a fear of failure. “While the pressure to perform well can act as a motivator, it can also be devastating to individuals who tie their self worth to the outcome of a test.” (Test Anxiety) Test anxiety can manifest itself in the form of an anxiety attack, which can cause symptoms such as difficulty concentrating and brain fog, among a multitude of other uncomfortable manifestations. Anxiety, along with many other factors, can alter a student’s ability to display their full potential. (Test

According to the Glossary of Education Reform (http://edglossary.org/high-stakes-testing), high-stakes tests are designed to measure student achievement and to determine whether a student is intelligent enough to advance in education. These tests can come in many forms; although the SAT and ACT are considered the most common examples of high-stakes tests in America, any test used to make important decisions about a student can be considered a high-stakes test. For example, students giving oral reports in front of a faculty panel to receive their diplomas would be taking a high-stakes test. However, because these high-stakes tests can only be taken a few times at most, and because these tests are supposed to accurately represent a student’s ability in the classroom, many students report anxiety before these tests. Because higher levels of test anxiety may be associated with lower test scores, one question arises: is high-stakes testing truly the most accurate way to assess a student’s ability in the classroom? To answer this question, researchers have begun to explore an alternative to high-stakes testing: low-stakes testing. Low-stakes testing is also used to measure student achievement; however, these tests are not typically used to make important decisions about students. I argue that low-stakes testing should be implemented in schools in hopes of lessening student test anxiety and encouraging long-term retention of course material.

Could something that is widely believed to be helping students actually be hurting them instead? Standardized tests are these tests are becoming an increasingly popular way of testing students and teachers in the United States. Though it does have its perks like every students being treated the same, and the ability to compare data, standardized tests put too much pressure on students and teachers, are unfair, take valuable time away from learning, and are a terrible way of evaluating and measuring students’ abilities. For these reasons, America should get rid of these pointless and ineffective tests.

To draw you an illustration, look at China for example. They placed top over Finland in the 2009 PISA scores, but that is only because they are great at preparing their students for tests. The children are lacking education on a higher level. This is the “drill and kill” method which Chinese educators prove only “competent mediocrity”. Meaning that in the long hall, this has no absolute value at all. In addition, the tests they are forced to take now can only portray a small portion of what education really consists of. In the sight of an educational researcher, Gerald W. Bracey, PHD, a standardized test misses out on true qualities of a scholar consisting of “creativity, resilience, endurance, leadership, courage, integrity, honesty, etc.” However a quantity of people will replenish that about 93% of studies show a positive effect on the accomplishment of students who are needing to take tests, but I would object that standardized tests are inadequate and inaccurate when finding the knowledge of students long term with only getting temporary wisdom. The essence of considering what is going to make a long lasting difference in the lives of today's generation must be what comes to the minds of those making the decisions. Obviously when it comes down to it, standardized testing

Throughout this paper, I will be discussing how important high stakes testing is to our country. First, I will show how these tests prevent students from moving on to the next grade level or graduate without the skills necessary. Secondly, I will discuss

For example, parents may start to bash their child and maybe say bad things about how they could have did better not even knowing the difficulty of the test. In conclusion, these test could really make people feel low of themselves if they fail.” Sleeplessness, loss of self-esteem secondary to poor performance and lifelong mental blocks can be seen in individual children. Parents, fatigued from the endless hours and days of testing, are increasingly frustrated. And with mounting pressure to perform being directly correlated to job security, teachers have succumbed to this pressure and changed their approach in the classroom:”. “Many students do not have a fair opportunity to learn the material on the test because they attend poorly-funded schools with large class sizes, too many teachers without subject area certification, and inadequate books, libraries, laboratories, computers and other facilities. These students are usually from low-income families, and many also suffer problems with housing, nutrition or health care. High-stakes tests punish them for things they cannot control.”. “Schools can use the survey results, she said, to determine whether they need to increase counseling, career training or college preparation services, or if they have them in place already, what they can do to increase the number of students they reach”.

Standardized testing has been around since the mid 1800’s. Even though testing has been around for a long time it is still debated whether or not it should precisely “score” students. Students have been subjected to standardized tests frequently through their years in school due to laws which have been passed by Congress. Decisions about the evaluation of schools and students are recurrently made by government authority and are often not in the best interest of teachers, students, or their classroom environments.

At the beginning of the school system, many changes have been made. Standardized testing, however, is a part of the school system that has not been changed in very many ways, and has very many problems with it. With the many problems that standardized testing has, it should be removed from the school system all together.

What once began as a simple test administered to students yearly to measure understanding of a particular subject has, as Kohn (2000) has stated, “Mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole” (p.1). Today’s students are tested to an extent that is unparalleled in not only the history of our schools, but to the rest of the world as well. Step into any public school classroom across the United States and it will seem as if standardized testing has taken over the curriculum. Day after day teachers stress the importance of being prepared for the upcoming test. Schools spend millions of dollars purchasing the best test preparation materials, sometimes comes at the cost of other important material. Although test