Harmful Effects of Standardized Testing

Standardized testing is known to improve students’ education, but is it really needed in school? Standardized testing determines whether a student is prepared for the next grade based on their test scores. While some students do great on their test others struggle a lot. Not all students are good test takers; majority of the students do good in school but struggle when it comes down to testing. While many agree that standardized testing helps improve students education, it shouldn’t be necessary in school because one test score shouldn’t determine a student’s readiness or academic level.

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.

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

You may wonder, Why do we have standardized tests? They were created so that the government could keep track of how schools were performing and they wanted to see how the money they gave the schools was being used. “In 1965, as part of the War on Poverty, the Johnson administration sent extra federal funding to low-income schools, and in return asked for data to make sure the money was making an impact.”(Rizga) “Standardized tests have been a part of American . education since the mid-1800s.” (Standardized) Standardized testing has been in our lives for over 150 years and it has been used to keep track of the education level of the citizens. “The modern testing movement began with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), enacted

Standardized testing has been an inevitable part of life for countless Americans, making them question the validity of their life choices since the third grade. When taking standardized tests, one encounters some obvious drawbacks. Any student who has been forced to take one of the hundreds that exist can recount the tales of stress and feelings of inadequacy that linger after every test taken.

Everyone dreads standardized testing. Standardized tests are tests required by law. They are supposed to measure effectiveness of the teachers, and improvements made by students. But do standardized tests really do that? Many people agree that standardized testing should be put to rest. I’ll show you why many people believe that.

For every student wanting to apply to colleges, exempt classes, etc., standardized testing is put into use to measure the amount of knowledge about the subject. There are many biased opinions on why standardized testing should be banned. Many come from unscholarly critics. However, there are some critics who show both sides of a story when it comes to standardized testing. Over the years, standardized testing has shown a wide variety of grades that are not good enough for many students. Some students struggle with what they got on the standardized test simply because they are not adequate test takers. Some however have some critical advantages that “show” that they are capable of taking standardized test and knowing the material. In other words, standardized testing clearly demonstrates no abilities of what a student really has.

Schools and the state should not make students take standardized tests. First of all, for most of the test, the students have not learned the material. Also, it only examines how someone does that one day and not of the whole year. Lastly, some of these tests rate the school and teacher’s performance, and not actually seeing what the students are learning in class.

Any person that has ever been in school has taken some kind of standardized test. These tests usually start around third grade and last until students graduate. Every college in the nation requires some type of standardized test for admission, so standardized testing is very important for any student that wants to go to college. Every student remembers sitting, waiting, and taking a test that lasts hours and wanting it to be over as soon as possible, but most students and parents don’t even know what these tests do for kids and if they even help students or not. There are many pros and cons to this topic that have been pondered many times. Questions such as, “Should students even take these tests”, or “what do these massive tests do to help

Throughout the United States, in our educational system, standardized test are used very commonly throughout grade school. They are issued to student as soon as they believe children are able to understand and comprehend the material the test question them on. A Standardized test is a form of test that requires all test takers to the answer the same questions, which there is only one exact correct answer. I have taken so many standardized test throughout my life that I can't possibly remember and recount how many were issued to me in grade school. I believe there are numerous flaws in how and why standardized test are formulated and issued to students that obscure a student's true potential. Some standardized test are made to be so

Standardized testing is over powering conversation across America. Standardized testing is a test in which is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. It is most commonly used to measure students’ progress and success. Most students of all grades through high school have some form of standardized testing.

“Standardized testing has become the arbiter of social mobility, yet there is more regulation of the food we feed our pets than of the tests we give our kids ” (Schaeffer). Standardized tests have commonly been used to evaluate a student’s knowledge of a particular subject over the course of a class, or to compare students with one another. Therefore, standardized tests are being used to make serious decisions for students in 2014. Decisions such as grade promotion, high school graduation, and the college a student will or will not attend are among the life changing outcomes of a single standardized 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 are being forced to prepare and improve their test skills. Too much time, energy, and pressure is being spent on preparing students for standardized tests. So much more is being sacrificed, for instance schools are cutting back on or even eliminating electives, programs in the arts and recess for young children. The focus on standardized tests is putting children in the 21st century at risk for emotional, psychological, and intellectual harm.

Standardized tests have a natural connotation of being negative, useless, or time wasting. They take away valuable classroom time from teachers and their students. Most of the time, assessments are given before the material supposed to be taught has been presented to the students. Therefore, students are at a disadvantage when it comes to taking these “fail or pass” tests. However, tracking students’ progress was the original purpose and push for having standardized tests. Standardized tests should be given for their original purpose, but not in the multitude or manner they are currently presenting students with.

Today, it can be observed that society has shifted education drastically from the time schools were constituted, to now. Throughout history, schools have gone from private, where only the elite can attend, to public schools where virtually anyone can attend. One of the factors that goes along with education is standardized testing. Frederick J. Kelly, father of the standardized test, once said, “These tests are too crude to be used, and should be abandoned.” Not only has this shift occurred within education itself, but it has occurred within the testing concepts found within standardized testing so much so that the founder of these tests has chosen to give up on it.

In the United States, formulating changes around the results of standardized testing has placed increased demand on school administrators, teachers, and students (von der Embse, Kilgus, & Segool, 2013). The results of these once a year tests have astounding effects on the student population, teacher salary, and how schools receive subsidies (von der Embse et al., 2013). Considering the reach that standardized testing has on all aspects of the educational system, ensuring that the final product effectively embodies the desired skills is vital for all stakeholders (von der Embse et al., 2013). Educators can identify text anxious students through classroom assessments and data driven interventions in order to decrease the influence on student