Standardized Testing Vs Standardized Testing

While a few standardized tests over a student’s school career can be helpful to make sure students are on track and teachers are educating their students, the United States education system has far too many standardized tests. The U.S should reduce the number of tests given to students each year. The current amount of testing stresses students and forces teachers to “teach to the test”. Standardized testing has not and will not improve the American school

These tests tend to cause the student’s too much stress and puts pressure on them to obtain a certain score on these test that are required on a yearly basis. Teachers also set aside too much time to teach strategies for taking the test and lecturing on how to eliminate some choices. According to Kathy Frandle this is “A huge waste of instruction time” (Fridy). Furthermore, the unneeded stress generally leads to a state of anxiety and it is “setting too many of them up for devastating failure and, consequently, lowered self esteem (Perrone).

According to education researcher Gregory J. Cizek, these tests are not helping the child. They’re hurting them. He knows that teacher need to show off what their students know, but he just doesn't understand why we have to do these tests. He can tell by his work that more than half of kids have an anxiety toward testing. The student may know a lot, but will freeze during the test. “Standardized testing can create a lot of stress for both educators and students. Excellent teachers quit the profession every day because of how much stress is on them. Students especially feel the pressure when there is something meaningful tied to them. In Oklahoma, high school students must pass four standardized tests in various areas, or they do not earn a diploma, even if their GPA was a 4.00. The stress this can cause on a teenager is not healthy in any way,” he states. His plan is to show people that this is a wrong thing to do and is unhealthy for both educators and the

Alarming is an understatement when it comes to the anxiety and stress standardized testing brings. Students are told how vital these tests can be to college acceptance, class placement, and school ranking, so it is no surprise that they lead students to become stressed out and anxious about taking the assessments. According to education researcher Gregory J. Cizek, "illustrating how testing... produces gripping anxiety in even the brightest students, and makes young children vomit or cry, or both" (2). The affect standardized testing has on students is unacceptable, no students should be anxious and uneasy about going to school due to a test. To continue, the Sacramento Bee reported that "test-related jitters, especially among young students,

One reason why standardized testing should not be used to measure students’ educational abilities is that it does not accurately reflect what students have learned in the classroom. Every student in a classroom has their own way of learning, thus they are not on the same learning level. It might take one student to slowly understand a topic in class, while the other picks up the concepts right away. Standardized tests are usually in a multiple choice format; having quick answers to superficial questions. The pressure of needing a high score on these tests leaves the student to become stressed. This results to them not performing as well and can affect their scores, positively or negatively. There are students who get good grades in class

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

Meanwhile, when students are excited about exploring a topic in depth, they are shut down because there is no time to learn, only time to memorize items that may be on the tests. Teachers on average spend more time on the memorization of specific words or questions that will be on the test, not the building exercises. Standardized tests are a waste of classroom time and does nothing besides hindering the learning process of students. Since teachers have to teach according to the test, they lose valuable teaching time and it narrows the

I feel the emphasis on testing unfairly focuses on funding rather than the education of the students. With teachers and administration fighting to keep their schools open cheating is occurring at an increasing rate and results are inaccurate. I feel it is important to teach the students what needs to be taught, rather than worrying about the abundance of test prep. The stress to perform well on standardized

Cizek, Gregory J. "More Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing." Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice 20.4 (2005): 19-27. Google Scholar. Web. 8 Mar. 2017. This source explores the negative critiques of standardized testing from within the education profession. The history of high stakes tests is described to provide background information on how testing practices have evolved. Various consequences addressed include: reduction of instruction time, neglect of teaching material not covered by the tests, instruction and assessment mirroring the tests, and negative effects on teacher morale and creativity. Cizek also takes time to address the time commitment of test taking. While multiple hours spent on one test is necessary in

The number of standardized tests that students must take throughout the school year is unreal. The Council of the Great City Schools did a study on 66 of the nation’s schools and discovered that students spend twenty to twenty-five hours per school year taking these tests. When schools are doing all of this testing, it does not leave a lot of time for teachers to teach

Next these tests take away learning time.We spend about 20-25 hours just taking standardized tests not including the tests they need to take in regular class time.What this means is that we are spending more time learning what’s on the tests and what is actually need to know.We also are spending too much time “teaching to the test,” and not enough time learning.Most of these tests take away learning time that is actually needed to know in real life.The tests take away learning time and that is causing

Students are stressed. But, what is the goal of these tests? Are we trying to make students compete with one another to see who gets the higher score? Or are we preparing them for life outside of school? Maybe at one time these tests were used to measure how well the future leaders of our countries were learning, but now it is no longer like that. These tests seem to show no post-school value except to find the most successful kids and give them scholarships to college. Going along with this, everyone, depending on their grade, is required to take the same exact test. Despite their different ways of thinking, students are grouped together and the ones who are different are “wrong” simply because they were unable to learn it due to the way they were taught. Holding every single student to the same standards avoids the fact that everyone has a different mindset and each person may excel in different subjects. This poses a question: when will the system change? Students are held to such enormous pressure that when they meet the standards, they are convinced they’re stupid, and I struggle with this, too. However, it would be easier if all of the intimidation encountered when we are testing would just be withdrawn and students can be able to take a test, try their best, and if they don’t succeed, they can continue to work hard because, after all, a test shouldn’t determine how

One drawback of standardized testing is that it often doesn’t take into account a student’s test taking ability. Many students do well in class or on their homework but perform poorly on tests. Standardized testing may not measure a student’s intellectual achievement, but rather measure a student’s test taking abilities. Many students stress out over tests and may make them perform worse than what they are truly capable of. Standardized tests are often multiple-choice problems and may confuse students since answers are often very similar. The format of the standardized tests alone can also confuse students. For example, the SAT test has many sections. The test is divided into three subjects; reading, math, and writing. The SAT jumps from one subject to another and may confuse the test taker. Many students are used to taking a test in their class on one subject and not jumping around from subject

When students think about tests, their thoughts tend to move more towards the idea of “how am I going to memorize all of this in one week,” I know this from experience. Why is this the way that students treat such “important” tests? I ask myself that question just about every time I think about taking an end of course test, SAT, ACT, or anything like that. All across the nation, students have also been introduced to a thing called common core, which has, for some reason, been made even more difficult than the previous set standards. This seems to be no solution to the problem, but will more than likely only worsen the ditch that we have gotten ourselves into, in terms of education. Before focusing on making school more challenging for students and teachers, would not it make more sense for the problem of students not actually learning the content of the course to be fixed first? With more challenging tests, comes more confused students who are willing to do anything just to pass; including flushing their education down the toilet. They do this by only storing the information in their short-term memory rather than actually learning the content of the class, but it’s not always their faults, either. The way the school system is set up, students are not taught how to actually learn the material or use it in real life. A student’s only goal is making good grades on the tests and surviving the class. This memorizing business can hurt students later on in life, as well. These kids get used to taking the easy way out, and will never learn the “deeper-thinking skills” that they need to succeed in the world today. “The focus on memorization, fueled by standardized testing, has obstructed learning, according to Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University, who argues that students have been losing or squandering most of the information they acquire in school.” (Towler.) Even a

To begin with standardized testing creates several critical problems for students and for the education industry. These tests are created to test over particular things. In the end these types of tests are only limited in the amount of knowledge that can be tested toward students. For example, “Standardized exams offer few opportunities to display the attributes of high-order thinking, such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and creativity.” (“Standardized Testing Has Serious Limitations”). Even though these tests are able to attack certain subjects at the core, they still leave out very valuable and critical information that all students should know. In