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The problems with standardized testing
Impact standardized tests have on education
The truth about standardized tests
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Standardized testing is defined as any form of test that requires test-takers to answer the same questions in the same style and is scored in the same way. But for students and educators all over the country, and all over the world, standardized tests symbolise a source of yearly stress.
The use of standardized testing is not improving education in America, and should be abolished. It is expensive, time consuming, and misleading, which leads to student stress, improper teaching methods, and alienated teachers.
Such testing evaluates a child’s performance based on only one day, and doesn’t account for external factors. Many students are bad test takers. They’re smart, and they understand the material, but the format the tests are presented in makes it difficult for that knowledge to show. There are tons of kids who develop
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Standardized tests often have negative effects on the way educators perform, with many teachers choosing to “teach to the tests,” which can hinder learning potential for all students. This also may be part of what makes school so boring to many students, with a sheer lack of creativity in learning.
Educators have such pressure upon them to prepare their classes for these exams, there are no skills taught beyond the test. That kind of schooling is not going to prepare children for what comes after the tests: real life.
Another issue within the function of standardized tests is how narrowly they evaluate a student’s skills. Student and teacher performance should be evaluated on growth over the course of the year instead of one single test performance.
Because the tests are often only once a year, student performance is measured individually instead of in terms of growth. Both a student and their teacher may have worked hard all year, and had great improvement, but didn’t score ‘proficient’ on the end-of-year test. That makes students who have come far in learning still feel that they have
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 Standardized tests are old and outdated, and the harm they cause to America’s education system by far outweighs the benefits.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.
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.
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 restrict student learning in the classroom (Cole, Hulley, and Quarles 17). The teachers in a classroom cannot teach what they would like to teach, but rather they are forced to teach what will be on the test. Often, when teachers teach what will be on the test, many students will begin to zone out and do other things, rather than listen to the teacher drill them with memorization for the tests (Willis 59) Teachers are graded based on how well their students do on these standardized tests, so they will teach only what is going to be on the test, to keep their jobs, or even get raises. Whenever this happens, students are hurt because they lose out on many opportunities to learn, and they even lose critical thinking skills. The testing curriculum often also places too many goals for students and teachers to reach, which will force them to move more quickly and not properly address every topic (Popham 71). Which, in the long run with further encourage only teaching the test, and nothing else.
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
Standardized testing has become a dominant element in the education world. It is now used not only to judge a student’s knowledge but to judge the effectiveness of a school system’s teaching. Standardized testing is not an accurate or efficient way to judge a student’s intelligence or a school system’s instructional abilities.
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
Standardized testing is not an effective way to test the skills and abilities of today’s students. Standardized tests do not reveal what a student actually understands and learns, but instead only prove how well a student can do on a generic test. Schools have an obligation to prepare students for life, and with the power standardized tests have today, students are being cheated out of a proper, valuable education and forced to prepare and improve their test skills. Too much time, energy, and pressure to succeed are being devoted to standardized tests. Standardized testing, as it is being used presently, is a flawed way of testing the skills of today’s students.
Standardized testing, I feel, is a waste of time. There are multiple kids, such as myself, that after long periods of testing no longer do their best because they begin to get discouraged. There are students that get good grades throughout the entire year but do so poorly on their standardized testing that it makes them feel as though none of their school work even mattered. Not only do these tests not test the ability of a student, but they also give teachers different ratings on how the children do. With the tests giving ratings for each teacher it not only puts pressure on the students taking the tests, but also the teachers to make sure all of the information is covered for the standardized tests that they don’t even get to create on their own. I don’t understand why we put so much pressure on these tests when in all reality they don’t even show your true growth in
The true question that everyone should ask is, “does these test reflect the student’s actual learning in school?” Patrick Ledesma says in his article “Do Standardized Tests Reflect Student Learning in Schools?” for Education Week that, “Many teachers quote Albert Einstein when describing the challenges and frustrations they feel towards standardized testing and its impact on their classrooms” (Ledesma). The quote from Albert Einstein that they use is, “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted”. Another quote that is often used is by the Student Learning, Student Achievement Report Task Force that says, “What is tested does count, but much of counts cannot be tested.”
Standardized testing has been around since the industrial age where we began to see children returning from the factory to classrooms. After not being in the classroom for months or years, these kids were behind their grade levels’ skill set (Lee). The standardized test was introduced as a way to determine these missing skills. Unfortunately, the use of standardized testing has grown into the key assessment for students, teachers, schools, states, and countries. Such high stakes testing creates a learning environment where creativity is limited and stress is high for both students and teachers. Many schools have become less focused on learning and more on the memorization of test materials. Although many administrators and lawmakers believe standardized testing is a good way to evaluate student progress and teacher performance, standardized tests can create additional stress, loss of creativity, enjoyable educational circumstances and can be biased against certain students.
First, standardized testing is stressful and gives kids anxiety. An article about the subject states, “six in ten psychologists said the Common Core learning standards, which include the state exams for students in the first through eighth grade each April, has increased students anxiety” (Joseph Spector). Students get stressed about standardized testing and worry about their scores, but the children are not the
I knew a good amount of kids that were so stressed to take a big test like the atc or the finals of the year that they would take some sort of medication they weren’t prescribed just so they could do better on the test. An investigative report stayed at the school for one year and he said that before Christmas it was a normal and good middle school, however after the kids came back from the break the teachers stopped teaching the curriculum, stopped reading out of the text, going over class discussions and engaging the kids in fun learning activities. Instead they would just teach out of the prep book, 22 percent of the year was spent teaching out of a test prep book, an even sicker side of standardized testing is the way teachers focus on the group of kids that are set to pass and left the kids that were at the top of their class to their own help but even worse they left the kids that were at the bottom of the class to fend for themselves, how do you expect a middle school who is already struggling to pass as it is to pass a test prep book? It gets rid of the acknowledgment that the little prodigies get when they excel in their subjects.