Should Standardized Testing Be Mandatory Essay

We shouldn’t have to take standardized tests because they don’t provide any feedback on how to perform better. The tests treat everyone who takes them feel identical, they don’t make you feel different. These tests make create a huge amount of stress on teachers and students. Most test takers can handle certain levels of stress but others can’t handle any amount. There should be other options that schools and colleges could use or get rid of the tests all

“We are raising today's children in sterile, risk-averse and highly structured environments. In so doing, we are… cultivating a generation of children who can follow the rules in organized sports games, sit for hours in front of screens and mark bubbles on standardized tests” (Darell Hammond). The school environment is usually thought as a place where children go and gain education that will later help their adult lives. However, sometimes this can be false, since the systematic way schools teach kids can be more useful in passing tests than understanding the concepts essential to being independent later. Standardized testing needs to be banned for the simple reasons that it shows few results of student improvement after they take the test, is unfair and unreliable, and can cause too much stress among children.

When people think of the education system, most can say that there are some problems, though they might not be able to pinpoint what needs to change first. If you ask most teachers, they will say that the first thing that needs to be changed in the schooling system to help the students more is the standardized testing. They will say that while it can be helpful it has a lot of faults and needs to be updated or changed to help its students. Standardized testing has often been a topic for discussion, between parents and people in the schooling system. It seems that a lot of people either hate standardized testing for not giving every child a chance to succeed, or love it for being a fair way to test whether a child knows what they need to know at their age. There have been many articles, books, and documentary’s debating on whether or not standardized testing is doing more harm then good. There was a comic made that shows the brutality and bluntness of what standardized testing is really like. Standardized Testing causes too much stress by putting unfair expectations on teens and doesn’t give every single student the chance to succeed.

In the world today standardized testing is mandatory in all schools whether they are public or private. If schools continue to make these test mandatory, students grades will show the reflection of what they are not learning. The school might also receive less state funding due to poor performance on these tests. Once No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was introduced US students slipped from 18th in the world in math in 2000 to 31st in 2009 (Standardized). Standardized testing is not beneficial overall because it does not cater to all students, they do not cover real-life topics, and they are detrimental to students.

Would you like to take a test that is unfair, expensive, and unreliable? Chances are you already have. Standardized testing in schools is not only bad for the students, but also bad for our country’s future. Some might think standardized testing is a good thing, because it is the only way to measure all students the same across the country. However, this thought is wrong for many reasons.

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.

Evaluating individual students through standardized tests is a poor means and should be replaced with performance-based assessments. An average student spends most of their early life inside a classroom, submitting to a sequence of tests and preparation for further exams to finally graduate and continue with further education, constantly struggling and striving for the highest marks. Through a strict series of standardized tests however, students instead form the idea that there is a single answer for all of the problems that face our world.  You are taught not to think logically or creatively at all, but to mindlessly memorize. As a student, you lose interest in the different disciplines you

Imagine, a world where there was no more standardized testing. Standardized testing is definitely something that all schools use now. Standardized testing is traced back from “seventh-century China, when the government began administering written exams to select candidates for the civil service.”(Standardized Testing).Standardized testing in the pass to now is being used to classify students into their classes. (Standardized testing). Standardized testing should be eliminated from schools.

Did you know that the average student spends more than twenty-four hours a year on standardized tests? These twenty-four hours only include the time taking the test. It does not include any time for prepping, or classroom tests given out by teachers. The standardized tests students are taking are mainly used for showing growth of students, and how well teachers teach lessons. From Pre K- 12th grade, students all over the US take at least 112 tests, yet we still show no growth of improvement. This shows that we need to cut down the amount of these tests. Today, this essay will explain that the amount of standardized tests needs to be cut down because (1) too much class time is spent towards the test, (2) the amount stresses out teachers and students, and (3) the quantity of tests do not mean better results.

Standardized tests have caused disagreements all across the U.S. According to http://standardizedtests.procon.org/, though they don’t improve most student achievements, it does improve positive effects in 93% of students. Hundreds of thousands of teachers and parents around the U.S are very against Standardized Tests. The teachers opt against the tests for the simple fact of they are evaluated from the results of their students. Parents opt because the tests end up stressing out there children. Standardized testing teaches students to take tests. The average student takes about 113 tests from kindergarten to 12th grade.

As the year ends, children all over the country pull all-nighters, take medication to help them focus, and spend countless hours studying. All this fuss because of standardized testing. A standardized test is a required national test in which students are tested on what they’ve learned throughout that school year. This method of testing has been around for some time and just recently, people have questioned whether standardized testing challenges students or is just a waste of time. Standardized testing does not help a student’s education and the U.S. should stop using this method of testing that, in many eyes, is holding our students back.

There are many issues with standardized testing. The article mentions, “But don’t count on students to stand out if they are constantly being trained to fit in.” Students are being taught how to test and prepare for what might be on the tests compared to just learning the subject out of the book. “Cheating” is done by not just students on these tests, but also school districts. Some change the test answers or give them to the student ahead of time, so the students would score higher. Another issue is that people in the education field use the scores to define the student. Standardized tests completely disregard a student’s learning ability and a student’s background.

Standardized testing allows for something schools can compare students’ knowledge with. Although this may be true, testing is actually harmful. Standardized tests are an unfair way to be accessed because they do not accurately represent a student’s abilities. Many people don’t perform well on tests; they are smart, and understand the subject, but they don’t show it on the test. It is easy to forget something on a test, even if you studied for a while and normally understand the topic. Many students experience nerves or anxiety when taking a test. Feeling nervous has been proven to affect a student's performance for the worst. Students panic if they run into a question they aren’t sure of the answer to which decreases their score even more. 50% to 80% of test scores were fluctuated and had nothing to do with the actual growth in learning of a student. This shows that tests are an unfair analyzation because the scores are not accurate.

In classrooms across America, standardized testing has become typical. Students are not astonished when they are informed that the state has come up with another standardized test for them to partake in. They are not astonished when told that their EOC’s, growth exams, and literacy tests are swiftly approaching. They are not astonished when they they are informed that high stake tests such as the ACT and SAT can potentially impact their entire future. Standardized testing is a system of measuring one’s intelligence and level of learning, and is heavily utilized in schools and institutes across America. Standardized tests were designed so that tests would be administered

College admissions are crucial a student’s senior year of high school. There are many requirements that need to be satisfied in order to qualify for admissions at certain schools, as well as the checklist to apply to each school. Hopefully, as a junior the student prepared by taking the SAT/ACT, and visiting at least a handful of potential colleges. By the start of senior year, the student must complete a separate application for each college which is quite tedious, then submit high school transcripts, shot records, admission essay(s), and SAT/ACT scores. Although it may be optional additional letters of recommendation and proof of volunteer work should be submitted as an extra precaution. These things show the college more about the individual,