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Controversy around standardized testing
Controversy around standardized testing
Pros and cons of standardized tests in the us
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Standardized tests like the SAT and ACT are on everyone ‘s minds as the November 1st early admission deadline approaches. As a high school senior I know that it is a very stressful time. The competition is intense, we are not only competing with people from our school for a slot in a college class, but we are competing against students across the nation. The competition is between people from every background imaginable; public schools, private schools, AP, honors, and academic classes, wealthy, poor, Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, etc. Students are encouraged to continue their college education at colleges and universities throughout the country; however, many students are discouraged from doing so because of the barriers that standardized tests put up. Every high school senior has one of those secret little numbers, and according to my teacher, that number determines our ability to study and succeed in college. The College Board claims that the SAT is a standardized test, which means that all high school students across the U.S. take the same test. On the surface this assumption seems true, but a closer look reveals test scores that are determined by factors such as money, gender, test anxiety and even race. For most high school students who want to attend an elite college, the SAT is more than a test. It is one of life’s greatest landmarks.
While reading the essay titled Does the SAT Predict College Success? I came across various reasons of why theauthor thinks standardized test should be kept and why they are fair. The argument was that they do not restrict access or diversity. Standardized tests do restrict the accessibility of the college and also limit the diversity. The College Board assumes that all...
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...ke a decision that is not based on scores. I hope that wherever I go is a good fit for me personally and not just a good fit to my scores. I hope you will reconsider your opinion on the use of standardized test. I also hope that you while you read the response to your essay you change your opinion and use your authority to influence other people to do the same.
Thank You,
Works Cited
http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/17/the-high-stakes-of-standardized-tests/
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/on_performance/2011/07/why_we_still_need_standardized_testing_post-scandal.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/05/02/poor-students-are-the-real-victims-of-college-discrimination/
http://ideas.time.com/2012/10/11/why-its-time-to-get-rid-of-standardized-tests/
http://www.american.com/archive/2007/july-august-magazine-contents/abolish-the-sat
Standardized tests, such as the SAT and the SOL, have been implemented for many years now for individuals in grade school to take. The SOL’s, or Standards of Learning tests, are Virginia’s version of standardized tests that students are required to take in order to pass a class, evaluating their knowledge on a specific subject. SOL’s are mandatory for students to take as soon as they reach third grade. Additionally, the SAT is a test taken in the final years of high school that colleges look at when comparing students for post-secondary school. People concerned with student’s education can come to the common consensus that education is important and there should be some way to compare a student’s achievements to one another. However, the process
... a tedious process, but the change can have immense, positive effects for the future college student. The ACT and SAT that supposedly measure a student's learning potential through multiple-choice questions should be replaced by a test of a student's desire to learn determined through the analysis of essays, recommendation letters, and school or community involvement. This change can result in a more academically motivated freshman class. Standardized testing in its current form does not accurately measure most students' learning potential. It does not allow for diversity and creates a huge hurdle for many potential academic achievers. An adjustment to a diverse, open testing format of the ACT or SAT and a stress on the student's other academic accomplishments can accurately measure the student's desire to learn, therefore measuring the student's learning potential.
Since the release of the report by Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in December of 2010 many in the government and community are searching for ways to reform the American education system to give American students the greatest opportunity to succeed. According to the report, American students are not testing as high as other nations in the world (Duncan, 2010). There are many contributing elements that have brought America to her knees in the education system, however, the obsession with standardized testing is found to be one of the most influential downfalls.
Some may say standardized tests are a wonderful thing for schools to test their students but I'm here to tell you why they are bad. The standardized tests have too many problems that need to be changed. There is problems with how many are taken and they need to be fixed. There are too many problems with these tests and the government needs to modify them. So this essay will explain that standardized tests are bad and they need to be fixed, because kids take too many of them, countries who take less are outscoring us, and they are too low quality.
The SAT, which is a national standardized test, designed to test skills, accuracy and knowledge of students has always been surrounded by controversies. It was originally created to eliminate the difference between students from different social backgrounds and provide equal level field. The test was developed by a psychologist from Princeton named Dr Carl Brigham in 1926, who also had controversial views on race, that suggested Anglo-Saxons were more intelligent than Other Races. Later in which he publicly apologized for. The SAT was designed to have impact on everyone equally, but studies have suggested the opposite. Initially the test aimed to give students from small towns in the northeast of the
"Former Bates College Dean of Admissions, William Hiss, said that intelligence is so complex, varied, and multifaceted that “no standardized testing system can be expected to capture it”(Westlund). Throughout the years standardized testing has changed its purpose and not for the better. In the late 1930s, the goal of taking standardized test was to award scholarships to "diamond in the rough" students (Westlund). Currently, the whole idea of taking the SAT or ACT is getting admitted into a college. Standardized test should not be a deciding factor of being admitted into a college.
Standardized tests are biased to certain students whether it is race, or even how much money the parent(s) earn. According to Standardized Testing and Its Victims by Alfie Kohn, the tests are a lot easier for children coming from richer communities like Dublin for example, then Cleveland where funding is scarce (Kohn, 2000). It is not just a rich and poor battle it also is a battle with students and regional or language barriers. According to Uyen Zimmerman, my former math instructor from Dublin Coffman, explained English as a second language students interpret asked questions phrased strangely to them differently than a student whose primary language is English. For example, she said there was a question on the ACT that asked a question about folding pizza and an ESL student thought that it meant putting pizza into a folder. Another example is asking students about black ice when students in states such as Hawaii and Louisiana, have never seen or heard of black ice (Zimmerman, 2014). I agree with her completely. All standardized tests are playing with what the creators of the test think is a “standard” and testing all students across America with the exact same questions.
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.
Thousands of students around the country and around the world will be preparing for the SAT and ACT tests while trying to maintain a high GPA. These tests will potentially have a significant impact on students' lives. Some will be taking these tests for the second or even third time to get that 1500 out of 1600 or that 33 out of 36, that they long desire. These flawed tests are not truly able to measure how well students will perform in college as they are supposedly used to predict. A single test that students have to wake up for at six, seven in the morning on a Saturday and travel to some random location to take a difficult test should not impact the student's chance of getting into college, let alone predict how well they will do in college.
...ry curricular diversity, test developers have to create a one size fits all test. These test developers however, can’t really pull it off. This leads to some questions in a standardized test that are not necessarily aligned with the curriculum in a particular setting. An important study done in 1993 in Michigan regarding this issue on standardized tests concluded that 50 to 80 percent of what was measured on standardized tests was not covered in the textbooks for that particular curriculum. Based on this study, it can be concluded that if the content of standardized tests is not addressed in the textbooks, topics that are covered on the test may not have been covered in that particular classroom setting This is an unfair flaw in test design which can result in lower test scores not enabling the tests to accurately measure the students’ learning achievement.
Standardized testing scores proficiencies in most generally accepted curricular areas. The margin of error is too great to call this method effective. “High test scores are generally related to things other than the actual quality of education students are receiving” (Kohn 7). “Only recently have test scores been published in the news-paper and used as the primary criteria for judging children, teachers, and schools.”(2) Standardized testing is a great travesty imposed upon the American Public School system.
Since elementary school, students have been sharpening their No. 2 pencils, preparing to fill in the bubbles on their standardized tests. To younger children, these tests aren’t a very big deal. But little do they know that the tests they take in elementary school are practice for the biggest test they will take in their lives. This test is the ACT, or the SAT. These tests are a huge deal. Students’ results on these tests could change their plans for the future, and that’s a lot of pressure. So are these tests really all that they are made out to be? Are they really that important enough to stress about so much? Many people have started to say that standardized tests are hurting American schools, and that they put too much pressure on students.
Today, in the United States, standardized tests are administered every year by states to their Kindergarten-12th grade public school students. Different states place different weight on their standardized testing results where some states differ their funding based on results and annual improvement, whereas other states allow schools to simply gauge where their students are scoring relative to other schools in the state. These tests, however, are only standardized within one state. One of the few tests standardized throughout the entire country is the SAT, the Scholastic Aptitude Test, administered by College Board and required by, “More than 800 of the nation’s colleges and universities,” (Comras, 1984). This test will be the standardized test focused on in this paper. While standardized testing is that, standardized, and enables the comparison of one student to another, the meaning of the score does not equate to a test of intelligence. Therefore, while standardized testing should be applied in the education system, it needs to be more indicative of the material learned in school and should hold less weight than it currently does in the college admissions process.
Based on the Programme for International Student Assessment’s 2012 results (PISA), the United States has ranked 30th in comparison to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) participating countries. The United States, a country that has once held the ideal for educational standards, has now ranked just slightly above other countries that are just being developed. By using high-stakes test statistics to drive America’s educational standards, classrooms are beginning to lose their meaning of helping students to learn and grow as individuals. Because of classrooms just teaching the test are beginning to lose the meaning of helping students to learn and grow as individuals, results of high stakes testing which can be affected by the minutest details, are not a reasonable way to judge overall student competency; a better alternative would be by performance based assessments. “Test developers are obliged to create a series of one-size-fits-all assessments. But, as most of us know from attempting to wear one-size-fits-all garments, sometimes one size really can’t fit all.” (Popham, James W.). High stakes tests are not a reasonable way to judge overall student competency because educators can not expect to have accurate and precise results in just one sitting for 12 years of learning. Although tests pose an important role in education, they should not be given such high stakes of determining if a student should be rejected from a college “based solely on the fact that their score wasn’t high enough” (Stake, Robert.).
In today’s society the average parent’s main focus is to ensure that their child does remarkably well in school. With the basic grading scheme being “A” for excellent and “F” for failure, can this be used to measure someone’s intelligence? How many of the A grades you have achieved in school helped you with your job today? Did finding “x”, or finding Pythagoras Theorem helped you to figure out what to say to your big marketing meeting? While growing up, society has taught us that in order to get a job you needed to obtain a degree and in order to gain that degree you needed good grades, however, does grades really matter? Does getting that letter grade on your final exam truly define your future and the way you think? How can you believe a society that tells us that natural beauty is everything however, applies make up and Photoshop to a model to make them “perfect”. Society is quite biased therefore how can this society define the comprehension and intellect of your brain based on how well you did in school? Although the author does agree that qualifications are needed to be hired on a job, an individual’s intelligence cannot be measured by the amount of good grades, certificates and degrees one possess.