Standardized Testing In China

Texas takes the STAAR, Alabama the ARMT, and Hawaii the HSA. Each state in the U.S. has a standardized test required of every student. From the ACT and SAT to the STAAR tests, standardized testing has become common practice for almost every student. The earliest records of standardized testing are when in China, anyone wanting to get a job in government had to fill out their knowledge of Confucian philosophy and poetry in examination. As more and more kids began to go to school during the Industrial Revolution, standardized testing spread as a way to quickly and easily test a large number of students. But not everyone agrees with the tests, stating that they are unreliable, and that the stakes are too high. Standardized tests cause immense amount of stress for not only students, but teachers as well. And the tests might not even be effective, causing more anxiety than it's worth.

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.

What is standardized testing? Standardized testing is a test which is given to students to evaluate the knowledge which they know. Testing can be in all subjects and topics in education. In Minnesota there is the MCA ( Minnesota Common Assessment). The MCA can be taken from elementary to high school, and the students are tested on subjects they have learned from the past. In Minnesota the MCA is a test which the government requires students to take. On a national level there is the ACT and SAT. These are usually taken as entrance exams to colleges and universities. ACT and SAT are two different types of test they have differ in grading systems and some colleges take both or one of the two. Why are standardized test given? The test are given so people in charge can evaluate the performance of the student and school; also gage the knowledge of the student. But standardized test like the ACT can not be an effective way to improve instruction and performance because it is a competency focused test. The reason why standardized test are competence: They test students on how well they can eliminate the incorrect answers to find the correct one. This is an inefficient way because what if the test taker crosses out the wrong answer, this forces the taker to choose between two wrong answers. There's needs to be tested efficiently and accurately gage their knowledge.

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.

Many know the stressful feeling of having to take the ACT. The exam room fills slowly with worried faces and remains quiet until the test stars. Students grasp their pencils tightly, their palms sweating with the thought of their future at stake with this single test. In order to get into any college, an ACT or SAT score is required. These required scores for admission vary from school to school which can make it difficult for every student to attend their dream school. A single test will determine who can and cannot attend a certain college. With this system, it can deny students with potential in certain fields a place in a college because they might not test well. College admission should not be based on

Standardized testing is used to tell students level in certain areas of academics; however, it is actually a waste of time and money.

A standardized test refers simply to any test that is being given in the same manner to all test takers. This same manner implies same questions, same timing, and same conditions of testing. The history of standardized testing dates for more than 14 centuries now. First standardized tests are claimed to be used for imperial examinations in China around the 7th century. However, It’s not until the 19th century that this testing methodology was first introduced to Europe and then to the rest of the world. In fact, even in the United States of America standardized tests were not included in the core of the educational system until the end of the First World War. Since then, a rising criticism and call against standardized testing has being rising and had its peak with the President Bush’s signature of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001.The standardized testing debate has rapidly spread from the US to the rest of the world, turning it from an old Chinese military testing system to one of the most important controversial topics in the world of education.

In America, a child is expected, as early as the age of five years old, to start taking tests that will measure their skills and determine if they are ready to move on to the next level of their education. This concept of testing in the United States is not new or uncommon. Standardized achievement tests have been used since the 1800s. In the beginning of the 20th century, there were many acclaimed colleges, and a few universities, all across the nation. Unfortunately during this time there was no systematic assessment to test the abilities or knowledge of the possible incoming students, because of this the College Board was created. Soon after the SAT or the Scholastic Aptitude Test came about. Before this type of standardized testing, individual

Students at Mandarin High School are being over tested. In our research we were evaluating how our stakeholders viewed standardized testing at Mandarin High School. We interviewed various stakeholders and their responses shaped our research. We asked our stakeholders about how they felt about the amount of standardized testing at Mandarin High. We conducted our research by interviewing reliable stakeholders at Mandarin High and recorded their responses.

Diane Ravitch once said, "sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds" (Diane Ravitch). This quote shows that standardized testing does not meet the needs of all students, only a select few, who may not even be the brightest. A standardized test is an exam that determines a student's achievement, and aptitude over the course of years. An aptitude standardized test determines how well a student will perform after receiving some sort of education. For example, the ACT test you take your junior year of high school. An achievement standardized test determines how a student is performing and evaluates the schools effectiveness, similar to the AZMerit test. These tests cover math, science, language, and reading and was

Standardized tests have been around for over 200 years. One of the first standardized tests appeared in the 1800s, when Horace Mann introduced the concept of using exams in Boston schools to gain information about the quality of learning and teaching in schools, (Edwards). Boston schools used the first standardized tests to compare teachers and schools, and to monitor the quality of instruction. Edwards then states in the article:

W. James Popham, former president of the American Education Research Association, defines standardized testing as, “Any tests that are administered, scored, and interpreted in a standard predetermined manner.” (Background). Standardized tests, such as the SAT or ACT, have been included in the American education ever since the mid-1800s. These certain tests incorporate multiple choice questions which could be graded easily with haste by the usage of automated test scoring machines. The tests also include “open-ended” questions that require the expensive alternative of using human graders. The standardized tests do come in a variety of different formats; however, multiple-choice questions and true and false formats are favored in usage since

As of right now, each state as its own standardized test. Just in the United States there are over one hundred standardized tests. Standardized tests were first introduced during the middle of the nineteenth century as a way to quiz massive amounts of students quickly. Around 1905, professor Alfred Binet created a basic version

Standardized Testing has been around for many decades in the United States. In 2001 George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act was used as a teacher evaluation tool and not a student evaluation tool. It was a misconceived belief that teachers were giving easier tests to show higher grades for their students it was also believed that the same teachers were bumping grades to make themselves look better and more effective (Introduction: No Child Left Behind. 2005). The push for standardized testing came from Universities and Colleges because they were using Secondary Education grades as part of their admission process and they were discovering that some students were coming in with a less than proficient skill set that did not match up to the grades that showed on

The Chinese Examination System was a civil service recruitment method that employed people from the Han dynasty. I do not think the Chinese examination system was a good way to select government officials during the Song dynasty in China. My reasoning for that is, that the exam didn’t reveal a man’s character/ ability to be a good official. Another reasoning is that the Chinese had to memorize over 400,000 characters in a short period of time. My last reasoning is that the exam exhausted people and they locked the people in the room for several days to finish the exam.