Issues With Standardized Testing Essay

Standardized tests are exams that are supposed to measure a child’s academic knowledge but have long been a controversial subject of discussion. Although it is one method to see how a child is performing, is it the best method? Standardized testing can be biased or unfair, inhibit both the teacher’s and the children’s creativity and flexibility, affect funding for schools, cause untested subjects to be eliminated from the curriculum, and cause anxiety for children and teachers.

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

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.

Ever since then standardized testing has been a huge part of education. Teachers across the nation had to teach to the curriculum instead of what they thought the students needed to learn. Nowadays colleges strictly look at ACT and SAT scores rather than classroom grades, because they believe that some teachers grade on a curve and are not giving the students a fair chance. Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance. A 2001 study published by the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-over-year tests core improvements were temporary and “caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning…”(“Standardized Tests”). Teachers are stressed over if they are teaching “correctly”. They went to a 4-year college, some even more, to get a degree in something that they wanted to do, either for themselves or for the children, and now they have to “teach to the test”. Tests can only measure a portion of the goals of education. A pschometrician, Daniel Koretz says, “standardized tests usually do not provide a direct and complete measure of educational achievement.”(Harris, Harris, and Smith).

“No issue in the U.S. Education is more controversial than (standardized) testing. Some people view it as the linchpin of serious reform and improvement, others as a menace to quality teaching and learning” (Phelps). A tool that educators use to learn about students and their learning capabilities is the standardized test. Standardized tests are designed to give a common measure of a student’s performance. Popular tests include the SAT, IQ tests, Regents Exams, and the ACT. “Three kinds of standardized tests are used frequently in schools: achievement, diagnostic, and aptitude” (Woolfolk 550). Achievement tests can be used to help a teacher assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses in a

One of the main reasons schools claim to use standardized testing is to compare performance levels of different students in different locations around the nation, but this is an unreliable way to do so. According to many studies, such tests decrease student motivation and increase their stress and anxiety. Far too much emphasis is put into standardized tests to the point where teachers are teaching to the test rather than making sure real learning is taking place. Students aren’t learning everything that is part of their curriculum. Too much focus is directed to

Opponents have stated that the tests are not objective or fair, that extreme testing challenges the ability to yield students that are critical thinkers, and they support a thin curriculum. Standardized testing evaluates a student’s performance on one certain day and does not take into account exterior influences. The success of a school is contingent on the performance of the students. There are many individuals who just do not do well on tests. Many of these students are understand the content and are smart, but it is not reflected on the test. Standardized testing only evaluates the student’s performance instead of the general progression of the student throughout the year. In this paper I will provide my thoughts on whether or not standardized testing is a good thing or

The first reason why standardized testing should not be implemented in the education system is because it limits the students learning capabilities. Standardized testing can not measure creativity, effort, imagination, and many more merit qualities. American schooling has focused on only teaching to the test and emphasizes on three main subjects: math, reading, and science. In addition, teachers put too much urgency on the importance of getting a certain score which diminishes the students interest in learning. Even though, standardized testing gives teachers a direction to

These tests, which in theory, are intended to judge a student’s growth and/or proficiency over time, in reality only measure how well a student is prepared for that specific test and not the actual material that is taught in the classroom. Standardized tests are for the most part aptitude tests, which sound beneficial, as they are evaluating a student’s ability to learn, but which actually measure how well the students can perform on a mind-numbing test that is most often not even loosely related to what

“Standardized testing has become the arbiter of social mobility, yet there is more regulation of the food we feed our pets that of the tests we give our kids ” (Robert Schaeffer quotes)

To begin with standardized testing creates several critical problems for students and for the education industry. These tests are created to test over particular things. In the end these types of tests are only limited in the amount of knowledge that can be tested toward students. For example, “Standardized exams offer few opportunities to display the attributes of high-order thinking, such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and creativity.” (“Standardized Testing Has Serious Limitations”). Even though these tests are able to attack certain subjects at the core, they still leave out very valuable and critical information that all students should know. In

Standardized tests do not really show students abilities when it comes to a subject, it just shows if they can pass it or not. “Standardized tests are unnecessary because they rarely show what we don't already know. Ask any teacher and she can tell you which students can read and write” (Jourlies 2). A student, when it comes to a test, can take a test and get a good grade on it, it does not show whether they gave it their best or just did not. If anyone can see good results, they automatically see if a school is on track. “We could publish the results of these performance tasks, and the public would have a good idea of what we're good at and what we're not” (Jourlies 8). It would be helpful for a public to see on what a school has, it also can wake up the school and start to lead the student on a focus of what was not accomplished. It is not necessary to have tests that can show something that is not always going to be true to what it seems, others can see what is shown on a result, but at the same time do not know where it has gone

A very current and ongoing important issue happening within the education system is standardized testing. A standardized test is any examination that's administered and scored in a calculated, standard manner. There are two major kinds of standardized tests: aptitude tests and achievement tests. Standardized aptitude tests predict how well students might perform in some subsequent educational setting. The most common examples are the SAT’s and the ACT’s. The SAT and the ACT attempt to estimate how well high school students will perform in college. But standardized test scores are what citizens and school board members rely on when they evaluate a school's effectiveness. Nationally, five such tests are in use: California Achievement Tests,

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.

Nearly thirty percent of students in this year’s graduating class will not earn their high school diploma (Swanson). In the United States the rate of college graduation is only thirty eight percent, while in 2010, Canada’s college graduation rate was near sixty percent (Lee). In an effort to help with the problem of achievement in America, President Bush, in 2002, signed the No Child Left Behind Act. The Act called for 100 percent of students to be proficient in both reading and math in state given tests by the year 2014. Some criticized that the act permitted states to define what proficient is. Others criticized the punishments for not meeting the targets that were set, which included closure or privatization of schools,