The Pros And Cons Of Standardized Testing

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.

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.

Currently, there are around 37 thousands schools in the United States. Each year, there are more than a million students that applying for college institutions (National Center for Educational Statistics). As an university admission office, it is often difficult to select students based on numbers and words that show up on their application without knowing the applicant. Since there are many factors and can impact a student’s high school experience and performance, it is unfair to be comparing every student in the United States with a same standard. In order to minimize these differences, standardized tests were invented along with the No Child Left Behind act in 2001 which enforced all students to participate. Ideally, standardized tests are objective and graded by computer. The test is expected to be evaluating all students with the same standards. While the educators and designers of the standardized tests focus on generating a test that allows them to compare all students fairly, they abandon the fact that all students’ resources and backgrounds are inevitably different. Assuming that all elements of an educational system serve to benefit students’ learnings, standardized testing is an inadequate method of evaluation due to its negative impact on students and teachers’ mindsets, inaccuracy in evaluation of students’ abilities, and the

According to Education reform, “a standardized test is any form of test that (1) requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from common bank of questions, in the same way, and that (2) is scored in a “standard” or consistent manner, which makes it possible to compare the relative performance or individual students or groups of students.”

In addition, the SAT and ACT can be considered inaccurate because they are often biased toward certain ethnicities, social classes and genders. Those in favor of these standardized test argue that they are an equal opportunity for all to demonstrate their knowledge and capability, however, this is not the case(“Do Standardized Test” par 10). The ACT is known for being biased toward certain groups of people. “According to ACT research, when all factors are equal, such as course work, grades and family income, Whites still outscore all other groups. If the ACT

Standardized testing has become something of a norm under the No Child Left Behind Act. It has left the student and teacher responsible in having high test scores and has forced teachers to teach directly by the curriculum. What standardized testing does do is help develop memory, but at the cost of creativity (Emanuel 9-10). This is the problem behind standardized testing is that it has become linear and obsolete (Emanuel 9-10). It has been noticed by many for example Sir Ken Robinson said,” Testing in principal is a logical way of measuring student knowledge”, but he continues by saying that, “In practice it creates a very dry learning environment”. This shows that the No Child Left Behind Act and standardized testing is not working,

Standardized testing has been ruling over the lives of students, making or breaking them in their education without fair judgement. Tests like the SAT and the ACT count for way too much when applying to colleges, which in turn limits the student 's capabilities to thrive in an environment that would benefit them. There are many problems within a standardized test that deems them to be unreliable as a true test of knowledge. Although designed to test groups of students on intelligence, standardized testing neglects to fairly acknowledge the abilities of each unique student which reflect their true capabilities.

Since, schools need the passing testing sores, not only do schools eliminate classes, they make classes become only test-prep. In efforts to raise scores, a continuation of No Child Left Behind by Obama called Race to the Top was put in place. Part of Race to the Top includes judging teacher performance based on students’ test scores. When teachers are responsible for student scores, the class room is bound to change. The negative effects are this are described in an article in the Wall Street Journal, “Drilling children on how to take tests discourages innovation and creativity, punishes divergent thinking, and prioritized skills over knowledge. And the endless hours devoted to test preparation certainly deaden students’ interest in school” (Ravitch web).

Some of the questions on the tests themselves are questions that only specific students will be able to answer, and that does nothing for the students who don’t think the same way as the students who do know the answers. The tests are also ineffective because the tests are made without any teacher’s input. The teachers should be able to help create these tests because they know what the students should have learned throughout the course of the year. Teachers, would then not feel the need to be “teaching to the tests” they can split the time up evenly between all subjects. To create these tests no teachers were even asked to help, “Then, instead of asking educators how they could help with the transition, they slammed the door in the educators’ faces and wrote standards and tests that have locked the sterile 19th Century view of teaching even more rigidly in place” (Strauss).

Standardized testing has been around since the mid 1800’s. Even though testing has been around for a long time it is still debated whether or not it should precisely “score” students. Students have been subjected to standardized tests frequently through their years in school due to laws which have been passed by Congress. Decisions about the evaluation of schools and students are recurrently made by government authority and are often not in the best interest of teachers, students, or their classroom environments.

Despite some students having advantages over others, there is one version of the tests that all students take, one requirement as to what students must know, not to mention one method that teachers are forced to teach students with. The lack of variation frustrates lower performing students whose test scores are not up to par, and causes disinterest in clever students, as they already know all the material on the test. Common Core also leaves schools with little money at a disadvantage. All Common Core tests are taken online, forcing schools to invest in technology that allows students to take the tests, and the new standards required books students use to be updated. Many schools don’t have enough money, which requires schools to cut programs, dismiss and lower salaries of staff, or organize fundraisers, all of which either decrease quality of the school or overwork

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

The theme of limitations in testing design is represented as the discussion of inherent testing flaws that do not create bias intentionally and cannot be eliminated with the currently existing resources. Thus, Gawthrop (2014) states that at the present moment as well as in the near future educational professionals can do nothing to fully remove all signs of bias from testing design because standardized evaluation is extremely limited in its ability to measure student knowledge with perfect objectivity. At the same time, Robin Munson and Cinda Parton’s article “Bias and Fairness in State Testing” disagree with this notion as the authors believe that it is possible “to prevent bias and assure fairness” entirely with the help of the review committee

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