A wise man, Albert Einstein once said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Standardized testing is a test that is given in a same and standard manner. It is required that the test takers answer the same styled questions in a similar way to succeed. It is scored in a consistent way that makes it possible to compare individual student’s scores to school scores to state scores. According to Washington Posts, an average student takes 112 required standardized tests between pre-kindergarten to 12th grade (washingtonpost.com). Although some people see standardized testing to be beneficial for excelling in school, many consider it to be biased, a waste of time, and stressful for the …show more content…
These tests are created of two to three main subjects english, mathematics and science. Some qualities that standardized testing does not cover are creativity, critical thinking, curiosity, and leadership. These are just few qualities that aren't measured and covered, there are many more. Since the test does not contain these qualities students will start to feel that they do not need to know these qualities. All they would be focused on is how to pass the test. Their goals would not be to get better at critical thinking so they can solve problems in an easier manner, it would be how to pass the test. In that case, all the qualities that the students will have to know to survive and excel in life would be lost because of standardized testing. Do we really want to forget about these qualities to be focused on a …show more content…
This can prevent the student’s overall learning potential. This keeps increasing because the better a student does the better it is for the teacher. The reality is that it encourages an atmosphere and mood that is boring with a deficiency of creativeness. Teachers have great amount of pressure to get the students ready to pass the test that they fail to teach students skills and qualities that go beyond the test. “A five-year University of Maryland study completed in 2007 found "the pressure teachers were feeling to 'teach to the test'" since NCLB was leading to "declines in teaching higher-order thinking, in the amount of time spent on complex assignments, and in the actual amount of high cognitive content in the curriculum (drdc.uchicago.edu
“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
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.
Argument Against Standardized Testing President Bush is promoting annual standardized testing for all students in grades three through eight. This bill is currently being considered in Congress, and has garnered much support. As of right now, 15 states test students in those grades, and more than 20 have high school exit exams, which look only at the test score of a student, not at his or her academic achievements. Standardized testing is an unfair and inaccurate form of judging a person’s intellect. In many cases, people are either over- or underrepresented by their test scores, partly because America does not currently have the capabilities to fairly score the increasing number of tests.
Like Bert Lance one said, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” This is the way many people feel about standardized testing. To them the tests appear to be a reliable and harmless way to measure students’ skills. A June-July 2014 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 93% of parents say standardized tests "should be used to identify areas where students need extra help" and 61% say their children "take an appropriate number of standardized tests” (Ruby). The issue with those statistics is parents do not know the direct effects of standardized tests, so how could they possibly know the tests’ faults and damage it causes?
It’s an age-old question. Do standardized tests really show what students know? Some may think they are a great way to measure education and others may think that one test does not justify a child’s knowledge. What is this test exactly? A standardized test is any test that requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from a common bank of questions, in the same way. They are used to “judge” or “measure” the knowledge or skills that students learn in school. The problem with these standardized tests is that they measure all students on the same material, leaving out special skills the student may have. It also puts a great deal of stress on a student to know that they will be timed on these questions that
Standardized tests are unnecessary because they are excruciating to the minds of many innocent students. Each year, the tests get tougher and stricter until the students cannot process their own thoughts. The tests become torturous to the minds of those only starting in the world of tests. The students already battling in the war are continuing to fall deeper and deeper into the world of uncreativity and narrowness. As the walls narrow in on them, they are lost and unable to become innovative thinkers. Moreover, the implementation of standardized tests into the public school systems of the United States of America has controversially raised two different views –the proponents versus the opponents in the battle of the effectiveness of standardized tests. Standardized tests require all test takers to answer the same questions; the tests are also scored in a standard manner. Thus, the education system believes that it is fair for everybody to take the same test because it is preparing students for college learning. In reality, intelligence cannot solely be determined by a test score; therefore, standardized tests are ineffective in encouraging learning in educational environments for three reasons: they are stressful, discriminatory, and uncreative.
Throughout my educational career, I remember taking standardized exams since I was in second grade. My experience with the standardized test was never a pleasant one. At a certain point, I thought that it would hinder me from going on to the next grade, graduating high school and going to a college of my choice. I always felt that standardized test did not measure my actual intelligence and was frustrated with the concept that comparing students to others, by giving all students a basic multiple choice test, is enough to measure how well each child would do throughout the school. After I had started understanding the ranking system, I started doubting my ability to keep up with my peers, not just in my school but the state. The first exam that
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid” (Quotation attributed to Albert Einstein). This quote describes the horror that is standardized testing. These tests do not properly evaluate a student’s educational success level. They strain students to extremes and cause substantial learning consequences. The encumbrance of standardized tests has put too much pressure on students to succeed. All students are expected to take identical tests to determine how much they have learned, even though they are educated in different ways. These tests have several flaws and are not as credible as we believe them to be.
Standardized Test are not helping students perform in school or out of school in anyway or possible manner. Students should not be required to take theses unnecessary test to provide evidence for school boards to see if the schools are teaching or not. Standardized Test has it reasons though.It helps teachers in the school board know what needs to be taught and what doesnt.
Albert Einstein once said “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination”. Standardized tests do not measure a student's imagination or creativity and therefore can not accurately measure someone's intelligence. Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of not only a student's intelligence but their creativity, motivation, integrity, honesty and so many more valuable characteristics. Being a student myself and having gone through tests such as MCAS and the PSAT, I can say that these tests generalize and limit students, and they are simply meant to assess general knowledge. For some students standardized tests are their worst nightmare, for some it is impossible to complete a test in the way that is seen as “normal” in the eyes of the state or country. My sister for example is dyslexic, so according to her standardized test scores she is seen as
Standardized testing is a practical test for students, it is very explicit on the instructions, and teachers are saying it is fairly easy to administer. It is used to prepare students for college and all the testing skills they will need to survive exams on a college level. Standardized testing can offset grade inflation which means grades will stay equal in the schools and every school will have a fair advantage as far as comparing knowledge and aptitude. The whole objective is to have a test that is unbiased in grading and knowledge and gives each student the opportunity to excel.
To have a better idea of Standardized tests, we need to know why they were created. Some schools would give out free grades to students to give them an opportunity to get into a highly ranked college or university. A big problem came from this practice, when a lot of students enrolled in universities, they would have to drop out, as they are incompetent of scoring high. An example that I could give is from my father that told me “Standardized tests were created when a lot of people take up space in colleges and universities when they cannot deliver on what is expected from them. When I studied at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, a
standardized test can be difficult. That's why some schools don't highly recommend it. Some test are just billions and billions of dollars for a contract. Standardized test can be stressful. Some test can be like brain washing for kids. Some kids take their education very seriously!
The most obvious problem with such test is that it pushes teachers to “teach to the tests”. Teachers, no matter they want or not, teach students test taking strategies more or less in class because of the pressure brought by standardized test. Such practice impedes the objectivity and the value of reference of standardized test. Apart from this, one inherent, inevitable limitations of standardized test is that it “only evaluates the individual performance of the student instead of the overall growth of that student over the course of the year”, noted by Derrick Meador, writer of the About Education website. “This does a disservice to both the teacher who worked hard to help their students grow and the student who worked extremely hard over the course of the year and improved tremendously, but failed to score proficient.” Another significant drawback of standardized test is the stress it put on schools, which focus only on the teaching of subjects that will be tested but ignore the importance of other subjects as a result. For example, many Chinese schools pay little attentions to the developments of students’ personalities, civic responsibility, social skills, humanities, etc. These fields, though excluded from the test, play important roles in students’ lives and prepare them to be involved in society in the future. Last but not least, standardized test can never completely show the capacity of each candidate because of the limited questions it provided. Thus, it was impossible to avoid testing bias. People who do well on the test may just happen to know the
Some people say they disagree with what the system is based off and that there really aren't any benefits to having the test. However in many cases standardized test have actually been proven to be very beneficial when it comes to checking on students. The test is designed to bring students together and test them on the material that they have been learning. Not only does standardized test provide students with a score but provide them with an idea of how they are doing in their classes. It also provides the teachers with an idea of how each individual student is doing in certain areas such as math, english, science, and social studies. By allowing standardized test to be given, they can serve an advantageous academic purpose for teachers, students, parents, and schools. By giving students a standardized pre-assessment, one can establish a baseline for growth. It gives one the opportunity to see the true impact and growth they have had in their learning, whether it be the student, teacher, school, or parents. Having standardized test is not necessarily bad because they can provide a lot of information that can be very useful. As suggested by James Aycock, "how would we know what kids know without assessments? That’s the purpose of testing kids – to figure out what they know and are able to do." Having standardized test or assessments are useful and necessary because they provide data based on