Standardized Testing Argument

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.

Standardized tests can’t measure initiative, creativity, imagination, conceptual thinking, curiosity, effort, irony, judgment, commitment, nuance, good will, ethical reflection, or a host of other valuable dispositions and attributes. What they can measure and count are isolated skills, specific facts and function, the least interesting and least significant aspects of learning. Bill Ayers

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan presented a report titled A Nation at Risk written by members of the National Commission on Excellence in Education. It revealed the alarming state of the Americ...

... middle of paper ...

...er. David Koretz, a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education states, “What I would like is for people to understand what tests can and cannot do. I’m not arguing that we should stop testing – I think it’s valuable – but we need to temper our expectations of what tests can do. There are limits to the meaning we can derive from test scores. Tests are not designed to summarize all that students and schools can do.” (Fusaro 2009).

Standardized testing is a deeply flawed system. The American government continues to throw money at a program that has little or no hope of achieving the goals it set at its inception. The important message is that no test is valid for all purposes and “high stakes” decisions should not be made on the basis of a single test score. Test scores provide only a small picture of student achievement or potential (APA 2014).