The Pros And Cons Of Standardized Testing

The practice of evaluating students and teachers based on expensive and stressful standardized testing has been the focus of educational reform for over a decade and has thus far proven to be ineffective (Ravitch 51).

Standardized testing is suppose to benefit a student in many ways but a lot of kids don’t feel like it does. Some students have fear taking a standardized test. Those kids who make good grades but get usually get nervous before tests, normally struggle while taking their exam. Many times it causes students to stress and feel overwhelmed distracting them from their grades. (Ms. Moore), a teacher in Ohio believes that, “you don’t teach kids to perform well on standardized tests, you teach kids to learn, to enjoy learning and to not treat it as such a negative. When did learning in America become a negative?” (Analysis; Pros & Cons). Though education isn’t always fun, it shouldn’t cause students to stress over a test score. It also makes students give up once they know their test score is low.

Standardized tests can place a huge amount of stress on students and teachers. Some students do well with certain levels of stress, others not so much. A lot of students suffer from what is called test anxiety which hinders performance. Studies suggest that too much stress is psychologically and physically harmful. Stress is so overwhelming that the brain shifts into a “fight or flight” response. Which means that it is impossible to engage in a higher order thinking process that

Standardized tests are exams that are supposed to measure a child’s academic knowledge but have long been a controversial subject of discussion. Although it is one method to see how a child is performing, is it the best method? Standardized testing can be biased or unfair, inhibit both the teacher’s and the children’s creativity and flexibility, affect funding for schools, cause untested subjects to be eliminated from the curriculum, and cause anxiety for children and teachers.

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,

“According to a review of testing research that has been conducted over the past century, over 90% of students have found that standardized tests have a positive effect on their achievement. Students feel better about their ability to comprehend and know subject materials that are presented on a standardized test. Even if a perfect score isn’t achieved, knowing where a student stands helps them be able to address learning deficits.”(12 Advantages and Disadvantages of Standardized Testing). This shows when students are pushed to their limits and they have been working hard in a certain subject they are prepared for test . Teachers in this situation are put to a test also (“Good teachers understand that test preparation drills and specific core instructions to “teach to a test “) . Teachers are put to the test by whether or not they can push students to their best ability to pass the exam. Students and teachers are given the same amount time to teach a specific subject and get judged off of it . This goes back to say all of the stress put on students and teachers is unacceptable because students and teachers should not be judged off of a test

One of the main reasons schools claim to use standardized testing is to compare performance levels of different students in different locations around the nation, but this is an unreliable way to do so. According to many studies, such tests decrease student motivation and increase their stress and anxiety. Far too much emphasis is put into standardized tests to the point where teachers are teaching to the test rather than making sure real learning is taking place. Students aren’t learning everything that is part of their curriculum. Too much focus is directed to

To achieve this goal, this paper is organized into five different sections, each explaining the viewpoint of different authors. In the first section, there’s an account of five important facts about the negative effects of standardized testing,the amount of information standardized testing really covers, student placement, important abilities that aren’t being found, the potential of tests, and the outcomes of these tests. The second section, discusses five distinct facts about how unnecessary standardized testing is and how radical it truly is, how standardized testing affects teachers, the competition involved, what test scores really reflect, what measures students take, and how scores affect improvement within teachers. The third section, discuss an account of five other different viewpoints about the psychological effects standardized testing causes, the time teachers waste teaching about these tests, the obsession

Standardized testing creates a lot of stress on students and educators alike. Because of how much stress is put on them to prepare students for these tests, many excellent teachers quit their jobs everyday. In fact, in April, new federal data stated that 17 percent of new public school teachers leave their profession after four years due to stress and other reasons. Some teachers fail to teach students skills that go beyond the tests because they’re so pressured to get their students ready for these exams. This amount of stress can lead to feelings of negativity towards school and learning in general as well as cause negative health issues. Standardized tests places a large amount of stress on both teachers and students.

Facing the pressure of standardized tests, students try to cram too much information in a short period of time. Memory capacity decreases from the stress of one high-pressure test that can decide whether they get left back to do an entire year over. Poor test results may also make them feel insecure about their intelligence and encourage them to give up. Therefore it is evident that many students in the United States have weakened the ability to think creatively.

Facing the pressure of standardized tests, students try to cram too much information in a short period of time. The memory capacity decreases from the stress of the one high-pressure test that can decide whether they well get held back and redo the entire year over. When a student receive poor test results, this may also make them feel insecure about their intelligence and encourage them to give up and possibly drop out of school later on. It is evident that many students have weakened their ability to think creatively, in the United States. Christopher Longo states that Inquiry-based science instruction has led the way in assisting students in the process of discovering knowledge for themselves instead of simply being asked to recall information. Inquiry learning promotes creativity by increasing motivation, wonderment, and curiosity. The author proposes that inquiry is the key to enhancing creativity, while still meeting the demands of standardize testing. (Longo) Inquiry based learning is a form of teaching which involves the teacher as a guide on the side. In

This correlates directly to their ranking and teaching evaluations. Teachers feel pushed to teach a test (Layton 2). In order for teachers and schools to look good, test score of their classes need to excel. The teachers and schools feel that in order for their students to do that they need to learn how to take tests and simply more about the tests. This takes away from actually teaching the subject which is a lose-lose situation.Teachers teach a test instead of material that could go into more depth. Along the same lines, “In forty percent of districts surveyed, test results are not available until the following school year, making them useless for teachers who want to use results to help guide their work in the classroom,” (Layton 7). The tests taken by students have limited use for teachers who are in the classroom and could use them to further the student’s education. Access to these tests could improve the learning capabilities and give the teachers a broader spectrum of what needs to be focused on in the classroom. The teachers are able to see the scores and information carried with the test for the next year, but for the interest of the current students the statistics apply to it would be more appropriate to have access to the information. Teachers cannot effectively improve the learning curve to the individual

In the classroom teachers feel a pressure to have their students do well on the mandated tests. Not only because they want their students to succeed but also because if their students do poorly they feel that it will reflect negatively on them and their ability as an educator. Teachers also have the responsibility that if their schools receive failing scores that they could possibly loose their jobs. If a school fails to meet the AYP for

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.

Standardized Testing are required in many schools and states across our country. These tests are said to measure students academic performances in school. More and more students lives are becoming influenced by standardized testing. They are forced to memorize what they learned, not showcase it the rest of the world. People think that standardized testing is a good way to compare the performance levels of different students from different schools and also different locations. But what they don’t understand is that standardized testing is an absolute unreliable way of finding the performance of a student. Although most schools make students take these standardized tests, it for sure does not measure the knowledge and creativity within a student.