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Controversy of standardized testing
Controversy of standardized testing
Effects of standardized tests on curriculum
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Lum Lexington
Mar.21.20
Debate 1
Standardized Testing Neg. case “Today in the age of standardized testing ,thinking and acting,reason and judgement have been thrown out the window just as teachers are increasingly being deskilled and forced to act as semi-robotic technicians good for little more than teaching for the test…” -Henry Giroux. It is because I agree with Henry Giroux that I stand negative in the resolution that on balance standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States. I will now state my key terms:Optimization: according to Dictionary.com Optimization means “The action of making the best or most effective use of a situation or resource.” Standardized testing: According to edglossary.org
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You may not think about it but Standardized testing is quite expensive. According to Huffing Post and edweek.org Standardized testing cost 1.7 million dollars annually. That is a LOT of money with that we could be doing much more productive things. Also Standardized testing is very timely. According to wbur.org kids takes about 20-25 hours. With this time students are only reviewing things they ALREADY learned when they could be learning something new. Standardized Testing is also a bad situation that can be changed with a little bit of effort. If we stop standardized testing many good things will happen. For Example teachers will stop feeling pressured to teach to the Standardized test so they do not get fired. According to LAtimes.com Standardized tests do not help evaluate teachers. people are actually already trying to change this according to Radio,inc Republicain senate aids are drafting a bill to eliminate standardized testing. With the immense cost of standardized testing we could be putting money toward extra-curricular activities or better supplies. The possibilities are endless. That means that standardized test is something we could change and could make a better situation out
Miltich, Matthew. "Standardized Testing and Assessment Do Not Improve Education." Education: Opposing Viewpoints. New York: Greenhaven, 2005. 151-54. Print.
Standardized tests do not cover all the things students need to know. They also do more harm than good to students, teachers, school systems, and to states. Over a million dollars every year could be spent on more for classrooms and schools and it could help the funding issues most schools face. The stress levels and “drill like” teaching would lower and teachers could focus on teaching in more creative and outgoing ways. Also teaching things that will help students outside of the classroom. Schools could also stop relying on the students scores for federal funding, keeping jobs, or the school. Schools will take chances and teachers will try new ways of teaching using their students personal learning styles, not the needed curriculum for the
Standardized testing is a down fall to many students but also an opportunity for many others. Standardized testing has its pros and its cons. It can be the make it or break it factor into getting into colleges you are hoping to attend or the scholarships you want to earn. Some people may have their opinions about the test, whether they hate it or not but the fact is that it’s here to stay.
Standardized testing is not the best way to measure how well a teacher teaches or how much a student has learned. Schools throughout the United States put their main focus on standardized tests; these examinations put too much pressure on the teachers and students and cause traumatizing events. Standardized testing puts strain on teachers and students causing unhealthy occurrences, Common Core is thrown at teachers with no teaching on how to teach the new way which dampers testing scores for all students, and the American College Test determines whether a child gets into college or not based on what they have learned during high school. Standardized tests are disagreeable; tests should not determine ranking of people.
"Standardized Tests Do Not Effectively Measure Student Achievement." Opposing Viewpoints. Gale, 2012. Web. 28 Jan. 2014.
Standardized testing caters to one population of people and one style of learning. These tests are supposed to measure if you are on your grade level but can be extremely ineffective. I remember taking the SAT and them asking questions that I did not know how to solve and it was so long that it made me not want to take it. This creates a problem for students because they figure why take a test I know I am going to fail and that take hours to take. The success rate for that is very low. These tests cater to people that a tolerant enough to sit down for hour and comprehend the work in one particular way but everyone is not tolerant enough for it. Just like one of my old professor said everyone learns and comprehends and has tolerance for a lot of things but taking a test that is four hours long with work that you can’t comprehend because you don’t have enough time to think in that particular section is not fair to every stud...
standardized testing has been in use since the 1930s. Originally, it was used to test for kids who may have special needs for education. Now, it is used more as a requirement to receive federal funding and as a measure of students’ education. The “No Child Left Behind” Act of 2001 especially caused this. A standardized test is defined as a test, “…that is given to evaluate the performance of students relative to all other students with the same characteristics… In the United States, standardized testing is one of the primary methods used to measure the performance of educational institutions (and often teachers) and to make decisions about the distribution of funding,” says “Standardized Testing: An Overview” (Issit and Maureen 1). These tests have gone from assessing students for specific fields they may need help in to essentially acting as the basis of our educational system. It was believed that standardized testing would make the quality of every student’s education better by enforcing that specific amounts of information for specific topics need to be covered, but what they are really doing is limiting educational
It is not in America’s best interest to pass the proposal to require standardized testing at elementary school levels, or to force students to pass exit exams to earn their diplomas. If we wish for our children to be informed and educated, and ready to survive on their own in the real world, we need to give them the tools that will get them there. These tests are not accurate, and they are detrimental to the education of children. There should be no debate over how our representatives in Congress should vote on this bill.
The question to ask at this point is, why would something with documented negative medical effects be used all across the nation? There are multiple professionals claiming the adverse effects result from the use of standardized testing as the sole measurement of student success, yet it continues to be a defining factor for students across America. These test results are able to make or break the students, and, according to several professionals, it is in fact breaking them.
Why is standardized testing part of the college admission process? Some of us might still remember taking the SAT or ACT when we were applying for college; however few of us question why we have to take such a test. Millions of dollars are spent on prep materials all so we can achieve a decent score and hope colleges will be impressed. The College Board claims a high SAT or ACT score correlates to college success which is defined as a good GPA throughout college. However if you stop and ask yourself what the SAT or ACT has to do with college success, most of us will arrive at the conclusion that these tests have almost have nothing to do with college success. Some of the questions are simply on these tests are simply ridiculous and will never
The issue of standardized testing has been a highly debated issue in the United States for many years and shows no sign of being resolved any time soon. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 was an effort to standardize and improve our education system, but 13 years later it is still in shambles. While many people agree there is a need for some sort of measure for quality education, there is much disagreement about the effectiveness of standardized tests. Some even say federal programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have gone too far in using test scores to evaluate teachers (Gordon 2013). Unfavorable results from these tests seem to generate more punitive consequences for the teachers and schools than help for the students. The words “high-stakes” are used often in numerous sources to describe the current testing system and refer to decisions that will make a significant impact on both students and teachers. These decisions include repeating a grade or not receiving a diploma for the student and possible loss of a job for the teacher. Standardized testing is an ineffective and expensive way to measure student achievement.
According to Fyona Rose, “Not only do these tests belittle students' and teachers' hard work, they also leave them with negative feelings toward school and drain their love of learning” (Rose, 2015). This means that standardized testing can ruin the enjoyment of learning for both students and teachers. The reason standardized testing still happens is because it has become a standard for schools each year. But if the standard is bad something should be changed. Many who do not like standardized testing to do not believe that testing should be done away with, but rather be changed to accommodate the growing needs of society as a
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
“If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn't be here. I guarantee you that.” This quote by Michelle Obama illustrates the idea that standardized testing should not have such a large influence on education in America. However, a majority of people are under the impression that standardized tests are an accurate method to measure a person's intellectual ability. I believe that standardized tests have developed into a very critical part of the American education system; that is hindering the growth of students and teachers instead of providing a tool that can accurately measure knowledge.
If standardized tests were not there then the schools would need to rely on the multiple choice tests that are graded by the machine. procon.org Standardized test can show their teachers and parents how their student is doing in school and on tests. .http://connectusfund.org/10-big-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-standardized - When students take a standardized test, they can see their level of understanding the question. Lots of students take the test they can see their level which level are they on. If students don't take standardized tests, then the professors or teachers would not know how much the students improve during their four years of high