Issues With Standardized Testing Essay

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.

Students dread the time of the year when they stop with their course material and begin to prepare for test. Everyone is in agreement that some type of revolution is needed when it comes to education; eliminating standardized test will aid the reform. The need for standardized testing has proven to be ineffective and outdated; some leading educationalist also believe this because the tests do not measure a student’s true potential. This will save money, stop labeling, and alleviate stress in students and teachers.

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.

“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

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).

President Bush is promoting annual standardized testing for all students in grades three through eight in order to assess their academic achievements. This bill is currently being considered in Congress, and has garnered much support from individuals in the community. As of right now, fifteen states test students in those grades, and more than twenty have high school exit exams.

Standardized testing takes valuable time away from students to learn about lessons that will actually be useful in the future. They are expected to remember criteria learned in middle school and/or grade school, and the more time spent on trying to equalize the students, the more creativity is being taken away from them. Creativity is what makes people individual and unique, why would we want to live in a world where everyone is alike and boring? For example, between 20-25 hours in the entire school year for the average eighth grader is spent preparing and taking standardized tests, according to the Council of the Great City Schools. With all the time spent on studying for those unavailing exams, teachers could be educating students on how to survive in the real world, and guide them to be themselves through inventive activities.

In various ways, standardized test are beneficial from tracking students’ progress over the years to not allowing teachers emotions to get in the way of the testing process. Standardized testing sets expectations high for students and it does hold them accountable for the same standards, which may lead to achievement gains. By looking at the students’ performance they will be able to determine how well they retain information. Also the school is able to learn what their students are able to do and what they cannot do compared to other school districts, so they would be able to improve their education system. When giving more personal assessments, it is very possible “that the teacher or person assessing the student can let their emotions or biases affect how they score that student” (Young). In most cases, standardized tests are objective. There are wrong or right answers, and there is no room for feelings or emotions. Standardized testing gives teachers guidance to help them determine what to teach students and when to teach it. Tests are highly accountable and reliable as they judge the candidates on a common platform across states and nations. Standardized testing is “a simplified way of timeline management” (A Look at the Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing). Standardized testing gives parents a good idea of how their children are doing as compared to students across the country and

Standardized testing creates a lot of stress on students and educators alike. Because of how much stress is put on them to prepare students for these tests, many excellent teachers quit their jobs everyday. In fact, in April, new federal data stated that 17 percent of new public school teachers leave their profession after four years due to stress and other reasons. Some teachers fail to teach students skills that go beyond the tests because they’re so pressured to get their students ready for these exams. This amount of stress can lead to feelings of negativity towards school and learning in general as well as cause negative health issues. Standardized tests places a large amount of stress on both teachers and students.

Standardized testing doesn’t help students, it instead helps adults that don’t have to take the tests “Politicians get elected by promising better test results. Administrators get funding and avoid harsh penalties by boosting test scores.” (http://institute4learning.com/) Teachers also take time to teach things that are only covered on the standardized tests. If something interests the students or might be valuable in other aspects of life it is skipped over and remains unknown to

It used to be that one week within the school year children dreaded. The paper and pencil exam that would determine their fate of progress for the next year; now has been turned into weeks or an entire month long of missing class and staring at computer screens to take tests. Standardized testing are used in schools as a way of figuring out benchmarks for students and teachers. These types of evaluations are used to see the progression throughout the year. With the signing of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001 by President Bush; was the starting appearance for Standardized Testing. These kinds of exams analyze a student’s ability to memorize; rather than expressing the student’s intelligence. Thus, giving teachers a curriculum to teach to the test, and not actually teach students the information the students need to learn. Standardized tests should not be heavily relied on because the exams don’t prove the students intelligence, and teacher’s jobs could be extremely affected.

Standardized testing cause teachers to teach material mostly to the favor of the test. Teachers’ jobs are in risk by standardized testing. The students’ test scores affect the teachers’ ratings; teachers’ jobs are held accountable if there is a drop in test scores. Teachers’ salaries and benefits are being reduced to be spent on the tests. Teachers’ morale on creative teaching and care for students tend to diminish by standardization; which only necessitates minimum requirements to pass. Standardized testing presents a danger and causes suffering by standardization of education. Teachers tend to teach to the test for greater student test performance while decreasing their training in skills that are not related to the tests to teach students. Teachers take up the educational time to teach

Standardized tests do not asses skills when their questions are generalized for an entire population. Most of the time, the tests are not in conjunction with classroom skills and behavior. These tests asses for general knowledge and understanding of students rather that their actual abilities. Since the questions are general in nature, it becomes very difficult for teachers to know how to improve the students understanding of a particular subject based on just general information. This leads to teachers “teaching to test” rather than educating students in a proper way based on the real needs of the classroom. Another reason these tests do more bad than good is the fact that teachers actually have a test booklet instructing them on what to do if a student vomits during a test. Students study so hard for these tests and simply cannot handle the pressure. So in the end, their final scores reflect not their abilities, but the influences of their surrounding factors instead.