Arguments Against Standardized Testing

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Has Standardized Testing Become Just Another Political Experiment? Standardized testing includes the most critical exams for the futures of students and the worth of educators. For teachers and high school students this includes the SAT, the ACT, and numerous EOC evaluations and more. Students will spend unfathomable amounts of time studying for all of these exams and teachers will stress over the fear that they are being judged based on how well their classes perform on the exams. It is unfair to both students and teachers to demand students to take the same standardized exams and evaluate teachers based on those results. Students come from all walks of life. Near geniuses roam the halls with the same students who have medically diagnosed …show more content…

Standardized tests are designed to hold teachers and educators accountable, but teachers are not the ones sitting down with a number two pencil in hand sweating bullets in the test room. According to the results of a Gallup Poll in September of 2015, most Americans voted that evaluating teachers based on test scores is unfair (“Testing Doesn’t Measure Up For Americans” 12). Teachers have been mandated to make math and reading the priority and have neglected science, history, and geography. Educators who teach neglected subjects, like those previously stated, cannot be judged based on test scores that have nothing to reflect on their subjects. This is undoubtedly the cause of American students who have lost interest in school and have caused scores to continue to drop. Furthermore, students may perform exceedingly well in class: they may score perfectly on homework, quizzes, and exams, and may participate in class frequently. Teachers cannot predict that their students will not do well on standardized tests, when students do not show problems on work that teachers have created for …show more content…

They argue the reliability of, “Tests scored by individual schools and teachers who have a vested interest in producing favorable results” (“Standardized Tests – ProCon.org). They believe that standardized tests are the only way to have a non-discriminatory exam since everyone would be taking the same one. However, these tests are not fair to students who are non-native English speakers, and for special education students who do not receive the aid they need to perform well on these tests, which is another reason why scores are not showing the intended results (“Standardized

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