Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Advantages and disadvantages of our culture's reliance on standardized testing
Debate Over Standardized Testing
Standardized testing effects on education
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
After President George W. Bush passed the No Child Left Behind legislation, standardized tests began to make an appearance in most United States’ public schools. The purpose of No Child Left Behind was to ensure students from elementary school through high school are tested in math and reading. In an attempt to make sure that all children were receiving fair and equal educational opportunities, as well as, determining if students were successfully mastering content knowledge, students began being forced to take standardized tests during elementary, middle, and high school. Standardized tests such as the ACT and SAT require that all states set a standard of achievement for all students. Additionally, standardized testing requires that all test takers to answer the same questions or a selection of similar questions from a common source. In today’s public school systems, the concept of standardized testing has multiple goals: to show the federal and state government how the students are being taught in …show more content…
However, if educators and administration are focused on making the students scores better, the focus is taken away from how much the student is retaining the information. Administrators focus would be more on better scores for standard testing than students learning lessons. Journalist Quinn Mulholland states, “[t]his increased focus on test prep has had a profoundly negative impact on the quality of education many students receive.” By stating this, Mulholland implies that standardized testing is a test on the students ability on test taking, not the information they retained from their academics. When preparing for standardized testing, it is felt by educators that they have to stop in the middle of a lecture to focus more on strategies to obtain a better score on the
This is precisely the problem. Standardized tests are old and outdated, and the harm they cause to America’s education system by far outweighs the benefits. These tests were intended to monitor and offer ways to improve how public schools function, but instead they have impaired the natural learning ability of students and imposed upon the judgment of experienced educators. Although a means to evaluate the progress of public schools is necessary, it is also necessary to develop more modern and effective ways of doing so. Standardized testing mandated by the federal and state governments has a negative effect on the education of America’s youth.
Standardized testing is not a new concept; it has been in use since the mid to late 1990’s. However the “high stakes” focus on standardized testing is. The practices that accompany standardized testing have long been in debate. Those in favor of standardized testing will argue that the testing creates a system that increases grades and accountability among teachers, students and school districts across the country. On the other hand those that oppose standardized testing will argue the ill effects that standardized testing can have on students, teachers, and schools. There are numerous ways in which standardized testing has gravely impacted education, some of which are high stress levels of students and teachers, the hindrance on educational instruction, high monetary costs of testing as well as inadvertent discrimination and bias. Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota stated “Far from improving education, high-stakes testing marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy, from quality and from equity.”
Although there have been legitimate arguments supporting the benefits of standardized testing, such as their ability to successfully measure students’ proficiency, in recent years there have been concerns and disadvantages regarding how their misuse poses a serious threat to the American education system. Despite the belief that standardized tests should be used to measure students’ proficiency, there are more reasons outweighing this statement regarding why they shouldn’t be used for this purpose. Not only is this a particular issue with standardized testing, but the tests are becoming more high stakes and are being used unfairly to determine things such as graduation, or placement in a school, resulting in a significant amount of stress and anxiety in students. Testing corporations are also profiting from the design of these standardized tests, while standardized testing is also forcing teachers to all teach the same thing, leading to a lack of creativity in the students. Aside from these arguments, standardized tests have been found to be becoming flawed and have poor design.
Standardized testing has always been a primary concern for teachers, parents, and the students taking the exams themselves. It is believed that standardized testing creates anxiety for all school-aged students, for the fear of failing the test, and puts unneeded pressure on the teachers to “teach to the test” rather than promote free learning. The documentary “Standardized Lies, Money & Civil Rights: How Testing Is Ruining Public Education,” directed by Daniel Hornberger (2013), depicts the misconceptions, truth, and reality of standardized testing, past, present, and future all across the United States.
His hands are shaking, his palms are sweaty, he is afraid his heart is about to beat out of his chest. The rectangular thing is placed in front of him. A bead of sweat drips from his forehead. he wipes it away. Soon after that he faints. This is all because of a simple rectangular piece of paper that has the words standardized test written on it in big, bold, black letters. These are just some of the signs of test anxiety, all so teachers, schools, and students can be compared to one another. Standardized testing is wrong and uneducational. Some would ask why this is erroneous, when the schools get money if the students do well on these tests. This is amiss because of three simple reasons. One, standardized testing does not work. Two, standardized tests only measure a small portion of why makes education meaningful. Finally three, standardized testing causes severe stress in younger students.
There has been a lot of talk about standards for schools. Politicians have made this issue a campaign debate. Now everyone has jumped on the “bandwagon” and wants accountability of students’ education (Shafer, 2002). When there is a problem in the education system, teachers are the first to be blamed. They are left with the responsibility of proving they are teaching what needs to be taught. States as well as the federal government use standardized testing to assess learning. They want someone to be held responsible for students’ learning. The problem lies when the teacher and student suffer from the results of standardized testing. “The pressure on educators and policymakers to demonstrate accountability in schools has driven some to use the test results inappropriately (Holloway, 2001).” Standardized tests are comparisons of one student to another not of how well a teacher teaches or a student learns. Standardized tests should not have such high-stakes in assessing learning because that is not their intended purpose.
Standardized tests have been a part of American education since the mid-1800s. Another form was seen in the late 1970s and early 1980s with a short-lived competency test (Linn 3). Horace Mann developed a test to administer to a group of students in the 1800s, his intentions were to make judgments about how the student was doing at their current level and determine if they would be capable of advancing to a higher level. Testing has changed in many ways since it first appeared with the beginning of public education led by Horace Mann. “The purposes of standardized testing have gone from an equalizer of opportunity to a tool of segregation used separate socio-economic status, wealth, and privilege” (Holmes 2).
Garcia-Pelayo2students, one can find oneself surprised when we learn that each state spends roughly “$1.7billion a year” (Ujifusa 1) on standardized testing. Money for standardized testing if being spentbefore students even set their eyes on a college application, and definitely before they start fillingout their applications. Standardized tests are expensive, and usually required too. Unless astudent knows for sure that the school they’re applying to, and getting accepted to, does notrequire standardized tests, spending those $65 dollars is almost inevitable. What most studentsconsider “back-up schools” might not need high grades, but at the very least they need thesatisfaction of knowing that you took a test and that they have a number by
Authors Amy Witherbee and Denise B. Geier of “Point: Standardized Testing is the best Way to Establish Education Standards” say, “Standardized tests are important, not for the testing, but for the standards. They are, in essence, a benchmark that when properly done, sets out for students, teacher, parents, and a nation, goals for the next generation” (1). Standardized testing can aid in measuring student success, but they are not always an accurate representation of a student’s knowledge or a teacher’s capabilities. The key phrase in their claim is “when done properly”, which is not something that is easily said or done. It is nearly impossible to ensure that the system is not being corrupt, or to prove that everyone is testing the same way, “standardized” or not. Some students are simply not good test takers. They could be the next Einstein, but when it comes to their ACT scores students may seem as though they lack basic knowledge. Other students may be master test takers but have no comprehension of what they are answering. Sure, they know the nucleus is the center of the atom, but do they know what that means? These tests are much less accurate than their supporters may
tests were primarily employed as measures of student achievement that could be reported to parents, and as a means of noting state and district trends (Moon 2) . Teachers paid little attention to these tests, which in turn had little impact on curriculum. However, in the continuing quest for better schools and high achieving students, testing has become a central focus of policy and practice. Standardized tests are tests that attempt to present unbiased material under the same, predetermined conditions and with consistent scoring and interpretation so that students have equal opportunities to give correct answers and receive an accurate assessment. The idea is that these similarities allow the highest degree of certainty in comparing result...
Standardized testing has taken over the education realm and led to a shift in the institutional goals and values of education. In the last 40 years, standardized exams have changed; they were once used to determine the learning level of students, but now they are being used to determine the teacher’s ability. Standardized tests do not measure education quality and are incorrectly used, leading to the wrongful evaluation of teachers and the limiting of education for students by schools.
The purpose of standardized testing is to help guide the teachers teach students the basics of what they need to know in order to move ahead in school. These tests are standard for core classes in any grade but differ from state to state. For Virginia it’s SOLs (standards of learning) in Arizona it’s AIMS (Arizona’s instrument to measure standards), although the name differs the purpose it the same in all states. These tests are to measure how much the students have learned throughout the year. To help improve the results from these tests, the no child left behind act was created in 2001. The bill does this by making the states and schools more accountable for the student’s progression. It improves the academic achievements for the disadvantaged; improve basic programs operated by local educational agencies, and many other things. Unfortunately educational tests like the SOLs and other standardized tests don’t offer much in the way of improved academic outcomes.
Have you ever been stressed out in your life? Have you ever taken a standardized test? You most likely answered "yes" to both questions. Well, so are many children (across the country) when it comes to school because of standardized testing. Standardized testing is a state-given exam that can determine the students educational life.
It’s an age-old question. Do standardized tests really show what students know? Some may think they are a great way to measure education and others may think that one test does not justify a child’s knowledge. What is this test exactly? A standardized test is any test that requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from a common bank of questions, in the same way. They are used to “judge” or “measure” the knowledge or skills that students learn in school. The problem with these standardized tests is that they measure all students on the same material, leaving out special skills the student may have. It also puts a great deal of stress on a student to know that they will be timed on these questions that
Standardized testing in the United States is not always a common practice. In the Mid-1800s, Horace Mann, an education reformist, developed a test to administer to a group of students. Its purpose was to determine how students were performing at their current level and whether they were capable of proceeding to a higher level of education, although the student’s success on the test had no negative repercussions. These tests were a necessity at that time because the idea of public education was still being molded and these tests were the only means by which student progress could be measured. Within 35 years of the first recorded examination in 1845, testing became the factor which determined whether students were able to be promoted to the next grade.