The Decline Of American Education

With the added pressure to do well in school, standardized testing becomes a means to added stress, anxiety and further complicates the pressure to succeed in a student’s life. Rather than a focus on learning and understanding, school has become a massive rope skill memorization test designed to have students memorize subjects to pass the test, and forget the material the next minute for the next test. When asked to speak about standardized testing, education chairman, Larry Taylor, said “It’s heart-wrenching, and it’s also insanity when you see the level of achievement these kids are already doing and yet they can’t even pass this test.” (Smith). The utilization of standardized testing further exemplifies and validates the idea that no matter how hard or long you work in school, your work will never be worth the few answers you write for the

There was a time when America’s education system was top-notch according to the culture and society. With time, a myriad of things has changed, but unfortunately what has not evolved is the American education system. The country is still following a system which was not designed for the current global economic climate. Equality, as positive as it sounds is not as sufficient when it comes to education. The system treats students equally yet expect a similar culmination and outcome. Every child has his individuality and distinct abilities; one cannot judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Conversely, a few of the prominent reasons why the education system is failing are overcrowded schools, the rise of technology, and following the same old school hours.

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

Standardized tests are unnecessary because they are excruciating to the minds of many innocent students. Each year, the tests get tougher and stricter until the students cannot process their own thoughts. The tests become torturous to the minds of those only starting in the world of tests. The students already battling in the war are continuing to fall deeper and deeper into the world of uncreativity and narrowness. As the walls narrow in on them, they are lost and unable to become innovative thinkers. Moreover, the implementation of standardized tests into the public school systems of the United States of America has controversially raised two different views –the proponents versus the opponents in the battle of the effectiveness of

“…only twenty-two percent of those surveyed said increased testing had helped the performance of their local schools compared with twenty-eight in 2007” (“Public Skeptical of Standardized Testing.”). Furthermore the poll indicated an eleven percent increase, compared to last year, towards the favor of discontinuing the usage of students’ test results for teacher evaluations. William Bushaw, executive director of PDK International and co-director of PDK/Gallup Poll also stated, “Americans’ mistrust of standardized tests and their lack of confidence and understanding around new education standards is one the most surprising developments we’ve found in years” (“Public Skeptical of Standardized Testing.”). All in all, not only are these tests a concern for students, who are forced to sit through them, hoping to get a decent enough score to place into a class, receive their diploma, or even get accepted to the college of their dreams, but they are a concern for parents as well, who only want the best for their children and to see them succeed.

The use of standardized examinations have long been debated in American society. In fact, the last several years have seen an immense shift from the prioritization of standardized testing to more holistic measurements of student achievement. Despite this shift, many school districts across the nation and college/university entrance requirements still place a significant, if not pivotal, emphasis on test-taking and standardized exam results. Throughout this paper, I will explore 1) the history of standardized testing, 2) arguments for and against its practice, as well as 3) situate the consequences of its use in one of the three philosophical goals of schooling. All of this will subsequently paint an investigation into the purpose of schooling in American society.

The human mind is perhaps the greatest object on the earth, animate or inanimate, but without the proper training, the mind is a relatively useless tool. Through the development of formal education systems, humans as a whole have tried to ensure the training of all minds so as to continue prosperity for the world. Most of the time, though, education systems do not realize the harm they are doing to developing minds and the subsequent negative consequences. Among the largest of these inadequate education systems is the American primary schooling system. The American education system is in fact failing; it continues to deplete children of their natural creativity and thirst for knowledge while preaching conformity, which in turn creates an

What once began as a simple test administered to students yearly to measure understanding of a particular subject has, as Kohn (2000) has stated, “Mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole” (p.1). Today’s students are tested to an extent that is unparalleled in not only the history of our schools, but to the rest of the world as well. Step into any public school classroom across the United States and it will seem as if standardized testing has taken over the curriculum. Day after day teachers stress the importance of being prepared for the upcoming test. Schools spend millions of dollars purchasing the best test preparation materials, sometimes comes at the cost of other important material. Although test

There are many articles on how standardized tests do not accurately measure the quality of a student’s education. The majority of them summarize the pressure put of teachers to teach standardized tests, rather than to teach material that would correlate with and help students to understand the material on standardized tests.

Public school curriculums have been morphed to teach what is on standardized tests specifically. "Research has shown that incentives can encourage teachers to "teach to the test" by narrowing their focus to the material most likely to appear on the test. As a result, their students' scores may be artificially inflated because the score reflects their knowledge of only part of the material the students should know about the subject." (Do High-Stakes Tests Improve Learning?). The concept of teaching to test is the problem in school systems.

American exceptionalism is a concept that has been valued by Americans who find every aspect of this country to be exceedingly better than other nations in the world. This concept was analyzed by a French writer named Alexander de Tocqueville in his work of literature called Democracy in America, in which he wrote that those who found the U.S. exceptional believe it is progressive within all of its systems. Since his exploration of the topic, views on America 's exceptionalism have plummeted over the past centuries. A major reason for this decline is the failure of certain systems, such as the U.S. 's educational system. America 's education system stains their self-professed exceptionalism due to how expensive it is to gain knowledge and the high importance placed on test scores as opposed to knowledge retention because it have adopted a standard that does not help students nor educators. The U.S. has a series of acts that upholds high standards for all children as well as it is not well funded. Funding goes directly to the pursuit for high test scores rather than giving it to schools for teachers to do their own assessments and lessons. Teaching then becomes a grueling task for teachers. With tuition on the rise every day, many freshmen find themselves unprepared for the workload because they

Ever since then standardized testing has been a huge part of education. Teachers across the nation had to teach to the curriculum instead of what they thought the students needed to learn. Nowadays colleges strictly look at ACT and SAT scores rather than classroom grades, because they believe that some teachers grade on a curve and are not giving the students a fair chance. Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance. A 2001 study published by the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-over-year tests core improvements were temporary and “caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning…”(“Standardized Tests”). Teachers are stressed over if they are teaching “correctly”. They went to a 4-year college, some even more, to get a degree in something that they wanted to do, either for themselves or for the children, and now they have to “teach to the test”. Tests can only measure a portion of the goals of education. A pschometrician, Daniel Koretz says, “standardized tests usually do not provide a direct and complete measure of educational achievement.”(Harris, Harris, and Smith).

Today, it can be observed that society has shifted education drastically from the time schools were constituted, to now. Throughout history, schools have gone from private, where only the elite can attend, to public schools where virtually anyone can attend. One of the factors that goes along with education is standardized testing. Frederick J. Kelly, father of the standardized test, once said, “These tests are too crude to be used, and should be abandoned.” Not only has this shift occurred within education itself, but it has occurred within the testing concepts found within standardized testing so much so that the founder of these tests has chosen to give up on it.

The tests require children to draw from knowledge they learn or experiences they’ve had outside of school, which is different for each student. According to W. James Popham, an expert on educational assessment, “If children come from advantaged families and stimulus-rich environments, then they are more apt to succeed on items in standardized achievement test items than will other children whose environments don't mesh as well with what the tests measure”. The biases in the development and administration of standardized tests often contribute to the achievement gap between whites and minorities. As a result students from low-income and minority families, English Language Learners, and students with disabilities are more likely to be held back a grade, be placed in unnecessary remedial education programs, and be denied a diploma (Reese, pg. 1). Another problem with standardized testing is the tests do not accurately measure teacher quality. Standardized tests are often used to evaluate teachers and schools staff based on their student’s scores. However, standardized tests are limited indicators of student knowledge and progress; therefore they do not reflect the wide range of knowledge and skills a teacher covers in the classroom. It is unfair to isolate the impact of one individual because teaching is a collaborative and developmental process (FairTest, pg. 1). People think that if standardized test scores are high they can label teachers as

When implemented and data gathered correctly, in the best circumstance, standardized tests can reflect the teacher’s ability to teach. Their knowledge and ability to relate said knowledge can be effectively measured, by the scores of their students. As written by Grant Wiggins, about the proper use of standardized test, “reform of testing depends, however, on teachers’ recognizing that standardized testing evolved and proliferated because the school transcript became untrustworthy,“ (Wiggins 354). In this Wiggins describes how the modern tests developed because of a lack of trust. Teacher dishonestly turned in altered grades, for students, to fake successful teaching and learning. Because of this, these tests depict the students’ true knowledge learned. Another factor that promotes standardized test, is, as written by Wiggins “rather than seeing tests as after-the-fact devices for checking up on what students have learned, we should see them as instructional,” (Wiggins 354). By this Wiggins suggests that such