100 million students take these standardized tests every year and they are viewed as a measure of competence for teachers and schools and when they’re older it can decide where you might be placed for your higher education or academic career. When it comes down to these tests, not many students can say they never had trouble with them. Standardized tests don’t measure the skills that kids should have, students should have skills such as creative thinking and complex problem solving with critical thinking to make their mind think deeper than a multiple-choice test with math and english on it. There should be other methods of determining whether a student has improved or not. “Class work and projects” (Garland) should be used to evaluate a student’s …show more content…
Colleges will look at some of these things while looking to admit a student: Leadership, a willingness to take risks, initiative, a sense of social responsibility, a commitment to service, and special talents or abilities. The dean of admission at the University of Tulsa says admission officers ask questions to themselves like “what is it that makes the student unique and how will you contribute to the life of our campus” (Character Counts: What Are Colleges Looking for?). Colleges want a diverse group of students to make their campus full of great students. They want students who are going to be involved with a lot of activities. When you eliminate tests, you can really see how a student is in the community and how involved they are with their school. More and more colleges are searching for students who are well-rounded. Some colleges are not having standardized tests as their top priority now, they are looking for good leaders and role models for their college environment. There are some advantages for having standardized tests, we can see how our schools compare with each other and we can see where what we need to work on. There are some researchers that believe that teachers over time can have different thoughts on a paper if given in different perspectives. With these tests, they are either right or wrong answers. “grades and test scores are far less likely to be generalizable than any standardized tests”
“Students are taking between ten and twenty standardized tests, depending on the grade. A total average of one hundred thirteen different ones by graduation.”(Locker) A few years ago the United States, along with other nations, was given a test to assess the academic strengths and weaknesses of each nation and rank them accordingly. When the results were released and the United States was ranked near the bottom, it was decided to start incorporating more testing through school. Between benchmark, TLI, PARCC, and common core standards, teaching technique was forced to change. Standardized testing has had a negative effect on teachers and students, implementing inadequate grading standards and the common core curriculum, such testing has made
Americans overwhelmingly think there is too much emphasis on standardized testing in public schools and that test scores are not the best way to judge schools, teachers or students, according to a national poll.
Although standardized testing is supposed to reflect what the students have learned, they often times do not to the fullest potential. What some educators may not take into consideration is the limited resources and ways that teachers are able to get the information across. Standardized testing not only has a negative effect on the things listed above but also a negative impact on the learning styles. Many standardized test are created to improve student achievement, but studies show that the testing format has not improved this at all. Standardized tests also do not incorporate all of the different types of learning, and since this is the case not all of the testing results are measured accurately, which can make the results be very incorrect.
Lastly, standardized testing is stressful for students, teachers, parents, and schools. Some students are very intelligent, but the test makes them nervous, so they do poorly. When the kids get stressed, the schools cheat on the scores because the school’s funding is tied to their test scores. One principal and a few teachers from one school were fired and sent to jail because of a scam they pulled involving tests. Why would you want a test that encourages cheating? Standardized tests need be less stressful.
Specific Purpose: To show the audience that constant standardized tests are harmful to students education.
Standardized tests don’t show accurately what the person likes or what they are good at. They don’t show if the student is a hard worker in and out of his studies. These tests show scores based off bubbles they filled in over a time span of 4-6 hours. 6 hours is not enough time to tell you who this person is and if they belong in a college. Even the test-maker admits that high school grades predict first-year college grades better than standardized test scores do. The reason behind that being is those high school grades have been acquired for over 4 years not just 6 hours.
Stricter standards and increased testing are better preparing students for college, which is definitely an advantage. Also, physicians, lawyers, pilots, and jobs as such, all take standardized test to ensure they have the necessary knowledge of their professions, which I can agree that it is a good idea. Even though I believe standardized test cause much stress to the teachers, others believe it is a guidance for teachers to determine what they should be teaching the students. The test also allows students located in various schools, districts, and even states to be compared and approved by parents because it gives parents a good idea of how their children are doing compared to students across the country and
The average students in the U.S. takes about 112 standardized test between pre-kindergarten and twelfth grade. That does not include the course quizzes, test, assessments, SAT or ACT. There are many things wrong with today's standardized test, but the main topics to focus on when it comes to those test are, the amount of test students take, the lack of feedback, and diversity, the value of creativity, and the false sense of security.
How Well Do You Think Standardized Tests Measure Your Ability? As for me, I know that my testing skills are not the best in this world. Testing for me is like a huge anxiety attack all in the testing time given. I personally do not think that standardized testing shows everything a person is capable of doing and/or showing.
First of all, standardized tests gets you ready for college or a job. Like if you go for a job interview they will look at your background to see if you are responsible or not. For example when you go to college they will ask you what is your IQ or what is your average in each class, and once again they will look at your background to see if you are responsible or not. So we need standardized tests for that reason.
This argument goes along with the other two mentioned and explained above. There isn’t much that is positive to say about these assessments. It places so much pressure on students to perform well and pressure on teachers to teach what is going to be on the test. This brings negative energy to classrooms. An article by Greg Jouriles helps explain why we don’t need these tests. He claims, “Standardized tests are unnecessary because they rarely show what we don’t already know” (Jouriles, Greg). He also goes on to explain that one’s test score isn’t reliable and that we should trust the teachers when grades are published. A school system can accurately judge the students in the school on what they are good at better than the standardized tests do. They can break down many different aspects of what students need to improve on and what they are already knowledgeable of. Students need to learn more than just the test information. Only studying and learning test material makes students less diverse and leads to boring lectures in the classroom. Another article written by an organization called Fairtest adds, “Some students simply do not test well. Many students are affected by test anxiety or do not show their learning well on a standardized test, resulting in inaccurately lower scores” (Fairtest). These tests punish students for what they can’t control, making them stressed and panicked that they won’t graduate or move on to the next grade. Some children are from low-income families attending schools with large classes with little to no materials for learning what is on the test. In addition to that, some teachers have never been educated on test content, which is not their fault, and this results in low-test scores. This all leads to why there are such negative feelings throughout classrooms of many
I have chosen standardized testing as my topic for this research proposal. I chose this
Standardized tests are not an accurate way to measure a student’s abilities or potential. Each individual possesses unique skills and intelligences. When a student also has a strong work ethic and motivation to succeed, chances are they will, despite their high or low standardized test scores. A student’s future or worth should not depend on a test they spent a few hours on. Instead they should be measured by their accomplishments throughout the course of many years and the potential they have to succeed in the
How to deliver best education to students is a question that has been debated for decades. The definition of having a “good” education may differ for many—is it receiving a satisfactory report card? Is it being accepted into an appraised university? Or is it achieving an adequate score on a nationwide standardized exam? These exams are becoming more and more popular in various nations. Colleges in the United States are gradually increasing the emphasis of the importance of the ACT and the SAT; South Korea is continuing to pressure its students to excel on its Scholastic Aptitude Test; but Finland, on the other hand, rejects the idea of pushing these exams. Tests are used to compare students and schools to others and maintain a consistent way of measuring education levels throughout a country, but they are mainly used to roughly gauge a student’s competence. At times, a student’s future could be reliant on a single test score. This type of testing may be doing more harm than good, proving that this is not really necessary for students to be fully educated. Standardized tests, instead of promoting the achievement of an education, are in fact doing the opposite by limiting learning and deemphasizing the significance of characteristics such as individuality and creativity, ultimately having a harmful effect on students.
As a leader I learned, the era of standardized testing has created, at times, a disconnect between the educational experience (content, assessment) students receive within the actual school setting and the format/content students are exposed to on the Keystone exams. Through research for my School Improvement Project and discussion between myself and students I have found many students have a found the Keystone Exams to be, more so, a separate aspect of learning instead of the exams themselves being an extension of classroom learning. As a future leader, as long as standardized exams are a part of state-wide assessment, I would certainly want to intertwine the exams into the identity of the curriculum. This would hopefully serve as a partial means to decrease the disconnect students feel they have.