Right now, in schools all across America, many students are stressing about a standardized test. Standardized testing has only begun to boom over the past decade. Many schools use the final standardized test grade to determine whether a student has failed or passed his or her classes. It has also forced many teachers to basically teach to the test. That means that they try to jam the material into their students’ heads just until they take the exam. Standardized tests are a major issue in public schools today and the government should get rid of them. Students are extremely stressed about standardized testing. They are worrying so much about passing a single exam and finishing it on time and are not able to actually learn any of the material. Miner (2000) stated that “whether you are smart, stupid, lazy, or hardworking is being reduced to how fast and how accurately you can darken the circles on a multiple-choice test” (p. 40). Many of the standardized tests are timed and completed on scan tron sheets. Tests, like the SAT, give each person a specific amount of time that he or she must complete each section. If the individual is unable to finish the test in the allotted time slot, he or she automatically misses the questions he or she did not have time to answer. Also, many times when one answers on a scan tron sheet, he or she will get a question incorrect because he or she slightly marked outside of the bubble or did not darken it in enough. These are not successful ways
Standardized testing is suppose to benefit a student in many ways but a lot of kids don’t feel like it does. Some students have fear taking a standardized test. Those kids who make good grades but get usually get nervous before tests, normally struggle while taking their exam. Many times it causes students to stress and feel overwhelmed distracting them from their grades. (Ms. Moore), a teacher in Ohio believes that, “you don’t teach kids to perform well on standardized tests, you teach kids to learn, to enjoy learning and to not treat it as such a negative. When did learning in America become a negative?” (Analysis; Pros & Cons). Though education isn’t always fun, it shouldn’t cause students to stress over a test score. It also makes students give up once they know their test score is low.
Test taking seems to be a negative aspect to every student’s life. No student is alone in the struggle to gain a good test score in order to get into the college of their choice because of their standardized test scores. They can do well in high school with a good GPA and put forth tons of effort but they may not good at taking tests. Some of it might be bad test anxiety or stressing out when the test is timed. Standardized testing is no longer a good indicator of college success because; standardized testing is biased against certain groups, testing adds too much stress to student lives, and impedes the assessment of other very important skills.
Anyone who has ever taken the ACT or the SAT knows how stressful and difficult the tests are. Students are forever judged because of the scores the receive by colleges and peers. The ACT/SAT are standardized tests that are meant to calculate what students have learned in previous years of high school. Colleges then use this score to determine whether a student will succeed in college. Specific problems with this process include the fact that high schoolers are extremely busy and may have other things on their minds, the tests require brutal test prep, the test can cause stress and anxiety, and the tests do not accurately gage a student’s college success. For these main reasons, students should not be required to take the ACT/SAT to get into college.
If standardized testing is going to change, then now is the time. The Every Student Succeeds Act [ESSA] has recently been enacted, and states are feeling the pressure to integrate a balanced assessment system as mandated. As this essay has presented, the current system and models of standardized testing are rife with problems. This proposed solution addresses the core elements of this problem with education in the United States today.
Students spend a lot of time stressing over standardized testing when they could be focusing their energy on more important academic and social activities that could benefit them in the future. Standardized testing are stressful for students for one that it is timed, students often times can not focus knowing that they have a certain amount of times to take this very important test. And if they start stressing out from not having enough time left then they are gonna start writing or bubbling in random answers and then that can cause them to do worst. Teachers are being told to “teach the test”,the teachers don't want to teach us the same basic things every year, but if they don't then students will be unsuccessful when it comes time to taking the exams. Which can lead to consequences ad problems for both the student and the teacher. Some of those consequences may include students being held back, teachers getting in trouble or possibly loosing their jobs because they have failed to meet the standards set and what people think students should learn and what type of material the teachers should teach.” Brain research suggests that too much stress is psychologically and physically harmful. And when stress becomes overwhelming, the brain shifts into a “fight or flight” response, where it is impossible to engage in the higher-order thinking processes that are necessary to respond correctly to the standardized test
In the United State there is a test called Standardized test, which comes in every level of education. Standardized test is any form of test in which all test takers are required to answer the same questions. This test is given in believe of that it will determine individual’s skill. This got introduced in the mid 1800 and ever since that, this has been one of the requirement educational background qualification. Standardized test has been an argumentative topic for a lot of people, some people think it is a good method of determining someone’s knowledge on courses. However there are people who think that standardized testing should not be the only way to measure student skills. This is not something we can conclude by just saying , we should take standardized test or we should not take standardized test, because not everyone think the same way. This topic is open to an individual perspective. This research will state both sides of standardised test, meaning will give both side information leaving the the decision to the reader whether students should take standardized test in the United states.
Standardized tests crush students and teachers under all the pressure they put on them. High stakes standardized tests put so much pressure
The use of standardized tests is not something new. Everyone should know about their importance and the emphasis put on them, along with the stress that follows. There are multiple choice tests, high-stakes tests, and the dreaded time-limited tests. It is true to say not all tests are created equal; however, every one of these tests has serious flaws. Standardized tests are unfair because they fail to measure students' abilities, they cause an unnecessary amount of stress, and there are too many incentives to teach the test.
For many years, schools all around the United States of America have required students in their public schools to take standardized tests. These schools administer at least one standardized test per nine weeks or every semester. In some cases, these standardized tests determine whether a student is getting accepted into college, going onto to the next grade, or even attending special tutorings. In all these situations, the outcome of whether the student passes or fails the exams is dependant on their future. The future of these students is not only in danger, but the future of our nation is also on the line. Schools should remove all the use of standardized test. These tests give students something to worry about, but it also may cause these
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.
In many ways, there are certain solutions to the problem at hand. Many people have began to crack the code to make standardize testing less of a hassle. One major solution to the problem is to get students a better score on their tests. The board of Education can start by having real teachers/people that score the tests, not machines. James Squire, author of “How Standardized Testing Shapes and Limits Students,” strongly agrees that standardized tests should not be graded by “robots” and machines. He argues, “Machine scoring systems can diminish student learning because they tend to prioritize feature slike mechanical correctness and sentence or word length rather than more substantive dimensions of writing.” Also, there is room for less error with real humans grading tests. With a machine, they can malfunction easily and it’s harder for the students to feel comfortable in an environment where machines are assessing their outcome. The advantage of having teachers score is that students feel like they have a better chance in scoring well. They will feel more confident walking into the room and taking the SAT’s because there is someone behind the test, helping them achieve the score that the students deserve. In many ways, standardized tests would be greatly benefitted, if they had teachers and people scoring them, instead of machines and
Standardized testing is not only costly but has many negative effects to it, whether its with teachers or students. Students already have a ton of pressure on them to deal with the 6,7, or even 8 classes they have to get through each day. Some students find the pressure to hard, so it becomes stressful. Stress can lead to depression for many kids and that’s what has happened.The anxiety hasn’t completely, led to physical ailments, but the new common core testing has turned into students feeling more stressed. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America states that feelings of disappointment, anger, helplessness and fear are typical reactions to test anxiety. In my opinion, Standardized tests seem to ignore the reality that kids are at various stages in their emotional development and maturity, they are sensitive to what happens in school. Middle school students, for ex, experience an epidemic of psychological and emotional changes
Have you ever thought about what college you want to go to after high school? In order to get into that college, you must be accepted. Colleges look for a numerous amount of criteria in order for you to get accepted, and one of those things colleges look for is your standardized test score. The standardized test is a test administered and scored in a consistent, or “standard”, way (edglossary.org). Seeing that you must get a high enough score on the test in order for your dream college to accept you, the tests are difficult, but are very worth it at the end. Colleges have been accepting students into their school with standardized test scores for more than 50 years, and with that being said, it has seemed to work pretty well (content.time.com). In the end, standardized test scores show that you deserve to go to that college, and is also a way of showing that you’ve worked hard for so long to accomplish something huge.
Students can be tested from the time they start pre-k and up into high school. Students, on average, take 112 standardized tests and spend over 250 hours taking these tests throughout all of grade school. These tests cause severe stress in younger students who want to do well on these tests, but older students couldn't care less about the tests and have been known to have fun due to the fact that they do not affect their grades. These tests have gotten more expensive over the years and because students have realized that they mean nothing to their future it has become a waste of money. Not only have these tests become a waste of money but a waste of students and teacher's time. Time spent preparing students for these tests throughout the year has taken away from class time and away from what the teachers really need to teach. Teachers have begun to modify their curriculum to fit the test to ensure that their students pass. Teachers can
Every year, hundreds of thousands of students across the nation are required to take many standardized tests. Which are used to determine student’s achievement, progress and growth. These tests supposedly say the outcome of how much knowledge a student has or has not learned. The stakes are high all because of a test score. Standardized tests may determine a pass or fail status for grade levels through K-12 or admission into colleges if you are taking an ACT or SAT standardized test. It is unfair and a very unreliable method to use to measure the performance of students. Standardized testing methods creates more harm than good and should be revised because many students, teachers, and schools suffer from this annually.