Should High Stakes Testing Be Banned Essay

High-stakes tests, which have negative consequences on test takers, should be banned because they are misused, unfair, and harmful.

One of the major misuses is that tests are required in lower elementary schools. Tests are carried out at a younger and younger age for certain purposes without concerning children’s joy of learning. According to washingtonpost, Similar to many other states, Arizona starts to test students at second grade, which is lower than what the NCLB legislation required. Worse yet, it is easy for people to find districts that hold test on young children at first grade, even at kindergarten. The misuse of test is brutal to young children. Also, in his study, Jacobson asserts that 36 states now hold standard of what knowledge children should acquire before they attend kindergartens (as cited in Johnson, 2008, p.22-1,2). In other

In every school, students’ talents are highly correlated with their tests scores, which is unfair to disadvantaged students. In fact, a student’s scores can be influenced by various reasons. According to Mills and Bryan (1976), scores can be negatively influenced by many factors, for example, if the students feels good, if ventilation in the room is enough, if students have breakfast, he/she tends to perform well in test. Moreover, the test questions also have effects on scores. Mills and Bryan (1976) assert that test itself has a standard error measurement, and the score minimally faithful to the measurement of a child’s achievement (p.16). Students’ scores present insufficient information to make decisions about how much a student have accomplished and how well he will be able to make in the future in these subjects” (Mills, & Bryan, 1976, p.17). Therefore, if test performance partly depends on other factors and test itself, test scores are not reliable, and students’ ability and achievements can not be measured by test