Standardized Testing Should Be Restricted

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Why Standardized Tests Should Be Restricted
Vincent Signorile
Monmouth University

Standardized testing has been a well-debated topic in the U.S. for a long time. The debate is whether standardized tests should be restricted or expanded. It is wrong to judge a student based on one end of the year test, when they have so much more to show throughout their school year. It is almost as if these standardized tests force teachers to educate their students differently by making them teach to what is going to be on the test rather than to the normal curriculum. There are many things wrong with standardized testing, including inaccuracy in scoring standardized writing tests (Au & Gourd, 2013). There has also been a resistance and …show more content…

The title of Hach’s article is called, Why I Hate Standardized Tests: A Teacher’s Take on How to Save Public Education. Hach discusses how he asks his students two questions at the beginning of every semester. These questions are, “what is the purpose of testing?” and “what happens to the information they study for a test after students have taken the test?” (Hatch, 2014, p. 2). The students’ answers were that they test to learn, and that they forget almost everything on the test after being tested on it (Hatch, 2014). The students gave honest answers and it helped show that standardized testing is not helpful for students in their future, as they forgot answers after being tested on them. Another good point Hatch brings up is “the real purpose of testing in public education is not to assess students learning but to rank students themselves” (Hatch, 2014, p. 4). This is true especially for standardized tests, as they are pass or fail. Hatch also talks about the Common Core test. He says how the common core will “fail to educate” students for “as long as its impact on students will be ‘assessed’ by standardized tests” (Hatch, 2014, p. …show more content…

According to the scholarly article, The Testing Resistance and Reform Movement, written by Monty Neill, “in the spring of 2015 more than 620,000 students refused to take state standardized exams (Neill, 2016, p. 8). There was a substantial amount of students refusing to take these tests, which led to bigger things such as making students and teachers lives easier by not having as many standardized tests. Teachers were also involved in protesting (Neill, 2016). Some teachers who had kids of their own took their kids out of standardized testing, setting a strong example (Neill, 2016). One of the reasons why this movement started is because of the stress that students had while taking these standardized tests (Neill, 2016). “Students, especially young ones, [were] breaking down in tears, vomiting, and urinating on themselves during the hours-long testing sessions. Parents found their children anxious and reluctant to go to school. Some psychologists declared that the testing was causing emotional damage” (Neill, 2014, p. 19). It was ridiculous that these adolescent students had to suffer through these long testing sessions, not knowing what to do with themselves. Young students are not trained to stay in one place for that amount of time. Also, for psychologists to say that these standardized tests were causing “emotional damage” shows just how wrong standardized testing is (Neill, 2014, p. 19).

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