Flaws In Current Standardized Testing

The standardized tests not only affect the students, but everyone else that is involved. It affects students by causing them stress and if they are unprivileged they do not get the tutoring and help that the privileged ones do (Reddell). Privileged children can get tutors to help teach them more about a topic. The unprivileged kids can get free tutoring at school but some are too embarrassed or scared to go ask for help. A kid should not be embarrassed about asking for help on a subject they are having troubles in they should be able to go to any teacher and not have other students around them making fun just because they are getting help because they do not know something. These tests have caused so much stress on not just students but also the teachers (Reddell). Students get more stressed over these tests than teachers do. They know that they need to try their best and it puts a ton of weight on them. Even though they can retake the test that does not mean a senior can. If a senior is to take these tests and fail then they have to come back either for summer school or back for a whole other year. It is not fair to a senior if they fail the test and have to come the next year or even during the summer just because he did not pass. A test should not be the reason he does not get to go to college that year and has to

We shouldn’t have to take standardized tests because they don’t provide any feedback on how to perform better. The tests treat everyone who takes them feel identical, they don’t make you feel different. These tests make create a huge amount of stress on teachers and students. Most test takers can handle certain levels of stress but others can’t handle any amount. There should be other options that schools and colleges could use or get rid of the tests all

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

Standardized testing is not an effective way to test the skills and abilities of today’s students. Standardized tests do not reveal what a student actually understands and learns, but instead only prove how well a student can do on a generic test. Schools have an obligation to prepare students for life, and with the power standardized tests have today, students are being cheated out of a proper, valuable education and forced to prepare and improve their test skills. Too much time, energy, and pressure to succeed are being devoted to standardized tests. Standardized testing, as it is being used presently, is a flawed way of testing the skills of today’s students.

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.

Schools all over the nation have introduced standardized testing as a way to evaluate what the students have learned over the course of the school year. Exams can be administered online or on paper, depending on the subject. Test can be taken at different points of the school year; results can be used as a way to determine what areas are weaker than others. Most results are viewed by the school board, administrators, and teachers. In some schools students take one end of the year test with different subjects, other just takes one test. These tests can be graded by groups of people are computers. Standardized testing has become a part of America’s educational system and many don’t see the benefit of the test at all.

Standardized testing does have its place in school. Often times it is misused and overused. “Measuring what and how well students learn is an essential building block in the process of strengthening and improving our nation's schools.

A new study by RAND Corp, in Santa Monica, California found that “between 50 percent and 80 percent of the improvement in a school's average test scores … was temporary and was caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning or productivity”(Olson). This shows that a student’s performance on standardized tests is too inconsistent to accurately display an objective evaluation of their education. Also, as the scores change each year, the ability to evaluate the teacher becomes difficult. In a high school in New Mexico a teacher found that “Students raced to see who could finish the test first, not who could get the most correct answers. … Former high school juniors interviewed this week said many students blew off the tests after being told that the scores wouldn't count toward graduation— unlike the required 10th-grade competency test”(Contreras). This shows that students do not take standardized tests seriously when it does not affect them directly. So, it does accurately represent students or teacher’s academic achievement. Standardized testing is not a consistent way to evaluate a teacher’s ability as well as track a student’s

Even though there are many downsides to standardized testing there are still viable reasons why they are still being used today. One of the main reasons includes the easy and quick access of testing students. Standardized testing allows schools to quickly access a large amount of students at one time. This is also one of the cheapest ways to tests such a large crowd due to machinery that grades which results in low tests costs for students. These tests also help by setting a national curriculum for all high school teachers to teach in schools. “It provides guidelines for curriculum. Standardized tests give teachers a structure of what needs to be taught. This helps keep classroom material consistent across the country” (“Pros and Cons of

These tests force schools to use a “teach-to-the-test” system, a system that’s highly inefficient, and they’re not even remotely reliable in evaluating schools and teachers. Since we are forcing our students to memorize topics instead of actually learn them, we are setting them up for failure when they are finally out on their own where almost everything is against them. Because of these major problems we are now seeing, we are creating the circumstances for several generations of screwing students out of a real education, and because of that, we need to stop giving out these tests. We need to completely eradicate standardized testing from our schools and education systems and to stop using them as a crutch to find if our students are actually learning or

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.

Standardized testing allows for something schools can compare students’ knowledge with. Although this may be true, testing is actually harmful. Standardized tests are an unfair way to be accessed because they do not accurately represent a student’s abilities. Many people don’t perform well on tests; they are smart, and understand the subject, but they don’t show it on the test. It is easy to forget something on a test, even if you studied for a while and normally understand the topic. Many students experience nerves or anxiety when taking a test. Feeling nervous has been proven to affect a student's performance for the worst. Students panic if they run into a question they aren’t sure of the answer to which decreases their score even more. 50% to 80% of test scores were fluctuated and had nothing to do with the actual growth in learning of a student. This shows that tests are an unfair analyzation because the scores are not accurate.

After viewing “15 Reasons Why Standardized Tests Are Worthless”, readers can conclude a number of things. Some students are natural test takers, but unfortunately, a number of students are not. Most standardized tests are multiple-choice, meaning any good guesser can past a test; even tests with short answer or constructed response are easy to get by if the student can master a strategy or template to answer those question. Standardized tests do not value the diversity and creativity of students. These tests expect all students to make the same cookie-cutter answer, but students will think of their own answer and their own reasoning. Their answer may not have been wrong; it was just different from the very basic answer key. Perhaps the biggest and most negative impact is that because of these tests, kids spend less time actually learning. Tests, do not only weigh a lot in the grade book, it weighs a lot on a student’s confidence and their promotion. Instead doing the real work and trying their best, some kids end up cheating (teachers do it too because their job is at stake) because as long as they get away it, they have made themselves a hundred. Standardized testing has taken over schooling. Instead of school being about discovering new things and helping shape the youth into functioning adults, it is completely based around a test developed by, not

Standardized Testing has many cons compared to pros. The biggest con of all is the stress it puts on students and teachers alike. The stress it puts on teachers is that sometimes teacher’s teach according to the test because they want to

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.