The Pros And Cons Of Standardized Testing

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.

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.

Following the signing of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, it has not only sparked fear in students but teachers as well. High stakes testing has taken a toll on student creativity and achievement as well as the closing of schools and termination of teachers and administrators. In 2011 Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated that “82 percent of schools could be failing by the end of 2012” (US News, 2013). Proponents of testing such as taxpayers and parents approve of this process as it increases accountability of the schools and teachers.

Each year high school students from around the country take the SAT or ACT. The ACT and SAT are both standardized test used by colleges to determine the knowledge of a student and predict what their performance will be in their first year of college. An immense amount of pressure is put on student to receive certain scores in order to obtain scholarships and admission into college. Even just one point on a student’s score can determine if they will be accepted into their dream college. However, the results from standardized tests, such as the ACT and SAT, are often inaccurate. Because of this one’s knowledge and academic ability are misrepresented, and they are denied certain opportunities. Standardized tests such as the ACT and the SAT

Lyndsey Layton for the Washington Post writes, “[…]the nation’s eighth-graders, […] spend an average of 25.3 hours during the school year taking standardized tests” (Layton). Twenty five hours of testing is about 25 class periods, and a school year is only about 180 days. So, according to Layton, 25 of 180 days are spent just on standardized testing, not counting classroom tests or quizzes, and not counting time used to prepare for the test. Jeffrey Cipriani is a second grade teacher in Boston. Although his students are not federally required to be tested, the Boston Public Schools requires reading tests three times a year. Because the tests are individual and can be as long as 90 minutes, it takes Cipriani about three weeks to test the whole class. He asserts, “It’s a colossal amount of time […] I probably spend about 60 hours not teaching reading but just sort of giving those assessments. They’re valuable but not that valuable” (Layton). If so much time were not spent on obsessively testing

One of the biggest topics in the educational world is standardized tests. All fifty states have their own standards following the common core curriculum. There are many positives and negatives that go with the standardized tests. A standardized test is any type of “examination that's administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner” (Popham, 1999). These standardized tests are either aptitude tests or achievement tests. Schools use achievement tests to compare students.

Standardized tests are hurting our educational future. They were implemented for reasons such as evaluating teachers, schools, districts, and so forth, and to determine if students should advance to a higher grade. What standardized tests are actually doing is taking over students’ education. Different levels of the educational system are continuously requiring more tests to assess various objectives, without any evidence that these tests are benefiting students. The effects these tests are having on the education are crippling. Teachers are under a surmountable amount of pressure for their students to achieve high scores, since their careers are in the hands of them. Teachers are reverting to unethical practices to protect their careers. Valuable education time is lost with preparing for and taking of these tests. Students could advance their education further and quicker with less preparation and tests. These tests are not an accurate assessment of students’ abilities since they only assess few subjects. Comparing students’ on only a portion

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

Preparation for these tests takes an excessive amount time away from classroom instruction. An article from the New York Times, states “…do little more than to measure rote learning”. Meaning teachers’ main goal sadly no longer for students to grasp the actual class material, as long they can teach them how to take the test and they’ll be fine, not leaving them with any long-term benefits learning wise. As shown, standardized tests produce little to no long term help for students, students practice for the test a couple weeks before, take the test, and no valuable information is retained except for the skill of test

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

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).

This bill increased the federal government’s role in ensuring the quality of education by enforcing standardized testing in schools. This measure taken by the government allowed them to hold schools responsible for the progress of their students. This law required schools to show yearly progress on test scores. If they failed to do so they will be labeled as a school that needs improvement. If a school fails to show yearly progress throughout the time frame of four years in a row, “it is labeled as needing corrective action and can face the wholesale replacement of its staff” (Standardized Testing, 2015). All of this left a lot of pressure on the teachers which began using class time in order to study for the government issued tests. Overtime, this sparked many debates on whether the tests benefited students or if they hindered their education.

Americans need education to do anything. Schools help involve people in education and learning at a young age. The government needed to scope out a way to make sure students learn in the class room. Eventually, they created annually measurement for students learning from grades 3rd-12th called standardized testing. In 2001, No Child Left Behind passed under President Bush was the starting point of standardized testing. The national test administered every year were meant to keep track of schools and the students. Recently, in the last decade standardized testing has not been doing its job. As americans we should take a stand for our school system. In America today, we have standardized testing supporters and non-supporters. Many other laws

Since the 1980’s, US students have been falling well behind students in other industrialized nations in terms of knowledge and education. The US is losing its ability to create a quality education for the majority of its students. The government has attempted to combat this by introducing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002, then replacing that with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2016. Nonetheless, these laws have failed in their attempts to improve education and have implemented rigorous amounts of testing rather than fixing the education system. They have created a flawed testing system, applied too harsh of punishments on under-performing schools, and harmed disadvantaged students. The fact that these problems exist is

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.