Standardized Testing: Does It Really Tell Academic Performance?

Over the last two decades America’s educational system has been descending on the national ranking chart. According to Rankingamerica.com, countries like South Korea and Japan are leading the charts in education while the U.S is rank number fourteen. There are many attributes that play a part of this destruction, but the overuse of the unforgiving arrangement of standardized testing has a strong presence. Though, standardized testing has been around since the 1800’s but the tests that are implemented today are no match for educators or students.

Should standardized tests measure children’s intellect? Forms of standardized testing have been around since the Sui dynasty time period, in which the Sui and Tang dynasties conducted imperial examinations in order to test those that hoped for government positions. Many other cultures have adopted it as well and refined it into almost an art form; for example, the United States. The United States began to conduct standardized testing around the time of the First World War; these tests measured the abilities of soldiers in order to give them jobs according to their results. Although the approaches to standardized tests are very different, the same general concept is the same. Since then there has been an increase of standardized tests: SAT, ACT, ASVAB, TAKS, STAAR, and EOC’s, just to name a few.

Standardized testing is not a reliable way to measure the performance because it does not measure the skills and knowledge in a more meaningful way like creativity, which plays a key role to attain high level of achievement. The tests contain a number of items whose comments and administration is done in uniform procedures. For the reason that most of the tests are multiple choices, the results of the test are reflected by intellectual ability; however, the test discourages creativity skill of students, which plays an important role to be successful. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers: The Stories of Success,” he argues that the creativity of student plays an

By World War I, standardized testing was a common practice in the United States. It started with the Chinese, filling out tests to determine job status among the workers. During the industrial revolution, children left the farms and land to sit behind a desk, which caused the need to test a large amount of children quickly. The most common and well-known in our society are the SAT and ACT, which became a common rite of passage into universities in our society. There are many different views on standardized testing, creating a rift in our society, whether it has positive or negative impacts on our educational community and futures of children in our country.

The nations that outperform the United States—Finland, Shanghai-China, South Korea—do not place such heavy emphasis on standardized testing. “In the last few decades, U.S. and Finnish education policies have appeared to be moving in opposite directions. While U.S. public schools moved to standardized testing, Finnish schools eschewed nationwide tests to evaluate teachers, students or schools, instead relying on sample-based testing and school principals to identify potential problems” (Tung). Finnish schools are the highest ranked in the world, having ranked “sixth in math, second in science and third in reading” (Tung) while “U.S. students ranked 30th, 23rd and 17th, respectively” (Tung). Finland’s education system differs greatly

Michelle Obama once said, “If my future were determined by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.” Standardized testing is, “any form of test that requires all test takers to answer the same questions, in the same way, and that is scored in a “standard” or consistent manner” (edglossary.org, Standardized Test). Standardized testing is used in most schools and is used to determine the futures of many student’s educations. These tests usually have sets of multiple choice, or true or false questions that are to be answered within a limited amount of time. Many people think that this is the only way to accurately measure a student’s individual intelligence. Even though almost all schools make students

I would like to take the time to discuss the issues that standardized testing is causing college bound students. Standardized testing is an evaluation of a student's performance on one particular day and does not take into account factors that could affect the test such as, the students rest, nutrition, the testing environment, and emotions of the student.. Standardized testing has caused teachers to move to a way of teaching called “teach to the test”, which can overall hinder a student's learning potential, because they are simply learning the information for the test and will quickly forget what they learned. Along with other reasons, the “teach to the test” method has damaged students creativity and creates a boring learning environment.

The following article “ Does standardized testing really evaluate your kid’s learning?” written by Tim Johnson, examines the effects of standardized testing for parents, students and teachers while evaluating the importance linked to student success. This article looks at the increase of anxiety for all members that are involved when standardized testing is held, and the debate on whether the results should dictate where to purchase a home. Dissenting and supporting arguments are present within the article, as some say it helps parents to understand how the child is performing in key areas, which can aid how teachers can improve classroom learning. However some argue that the standardized testing is misleading, as it does not give a comprehensive

There is much controversy about wether standardized tests benefit students taking them. Some people believe that standardized tests benefit children others believe that standardized tests do not test a child’s abilities completely. I believe that standardized tests don't benefit students. In this story I will explain why I believe that standardized tests don’t benefit students.

Many people argue that the tests cause teachers to “teach to the test,” and only teach subjects which relate directly to the tests. This hurts students’ learning, as they then only learn how to take a test. The students do not learn the rest of the curriculum well, and are less likely to learn the test information as well. Teaching based only on test-taking causes students to memorize facts in the short time before a test, then forget about it quickly. Assessment of teachers and schools based on test scores also promotes focus on test subjects rather than education in general. In Finland, one of the highest-ranking countries in the world by education standards, there is only one standardized test in the entire course of their grade school education (Hancock). Some studies have also shown that US rankings in education have dropped since standardized tests became required in 2002 (Is the Use of Standardized Testing Improving Education In America?). Several people argue that these tests are more harmful to learning than they are

In today’s society, standardized testing is when test takers answer the same questions. However as time pass, people argue whether standardized testing of any kind is essential. Standardized testing is necessary since it allows students to see where they are at in terms of understanding concepts.

In fact, one student, when asked about standardized testing, mentioned that “testing felt like such a waste,” and that the material covered on the exams “felt really irrelevant and disconnected from what we were doing in class” (Rizga & Hernandez, 2015). Standardized tests do not allow students to freely express themselves and their intriguing, creative imagination, which makes it impossible for a student to show who they truly. Even researchers agree that “teachers and school administrators should resist the urge to rely too heavily on the results from state-mandated standardized tests or any one test” (Tienken, 2015).

The article being studied talks about the correlation (if any) between standardized testing and creativity, and was conducted in Ontario. 8 teachers were asked to look at how their methods of teaching are accountable for the two terms. Responses showed that their methods were affected, because they teach different things

Standardized Testing and Achievement On average, graduating high school students will have taken around 112 standardized tests between preschool and their senior year in high school according to a 2015 study by the council of the Great City Schools (Ayers). Students all over the U.S. are dealing with the increasing amount of standardized tests being given to them, and not reaping any of the benefits they claim to offer. Test related stress, misinterpretation of intelligence and decreased classroom hours are only a few of the many issues that arise with standardized testing. Unfortunately, standardized testing does not give a clear indication of a students improvement or lack there of, and should not be used in schools to measure

Standardized tests are administered and scored in a consistent manner. In the US, schools give out 112 test; In Finland, schools give out 1 test at the end of 12th grade. The Finland’s Standardized test is called “the National Matriculation Examination” , which is taken at the end of high school, and graded by actual teachers. The test contains questions that ask students to show their ability to cope with multiple issues; Issues that span across multiple subjects and often require multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills.