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Standardized Testing

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Standardized Testing is not as reliable as many would like to believe, especially since recent legislation has turned the annual event into high-stakes testing. These high-stakes tests are used to evaluate learning and teaching in the classroom, identify students for special programs or grade promotion, and hold accountable educational institutions, with the consequences ranging from holding a student back, to a teacher losing their job, to an entire school closing down (StateUniversity, n.d.). Standardized testing has become an unfair "one size fits all" approach that has opened the door to unethical practices that ultimately render these tests invalid for the purpose of evaluating an educational institution as a whole. Variations to the standardized …show more content…

Curriculums are being narrowed to concentrate primarily on what is being tested (McMurrer, J., 2007). Narrowing the curriculum to spend more time on Mathematics and Language Arts (English) robs instruction time from other important subjects and deprives students from developing strengths and talents in the less-recognized, but not less-important subjects. This narrowing of the curriculum goes hand-in-hand with “teaching to the test”. According to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (2008), “teaching to the test” has the dire result of ‘what is not being tested is not being taught’, despite the importance of the subject. The method of instruction starts to reflect the style of testing, which is different from real-world application. Since not all subjects can be tested by the multiple-choice option format for standardized tests, development in the areas such as Art and Writing are being …show more content…

With such high stakes involved, standardized testing has become less about the student’s progression, and more about the survival of the educational institution itself. Legislations such as No Child Left Behind and Race to The Top have resulted in the very thing they have tried to overcome. Children who score low are being left behind due to instances of teacher intervention during testing or exclusion, and students who excel in schools are being developmentally held back with curriculums being narrowed to focus on the tested materials to ensure they pass as

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