Should Standardized Testing Be Banned Essay

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Recommended: Why homework should not be banned

Welcome back to the debate column. Last time, we talked about if homework should be banned. Well, of course, most students said it should and all teachers thought it should not. This month we’re going to talk about testing.

Is the use of standardized tests improving education in America? According to the Huffington Post, the United States’ students went from being ranked 18th in the world in math in 2000 to 27th in 2012. Failures in the education system have been blamed on rising poverty levels, teacher quality, and on the widespread use of standardized tests. People believe that America’s academic performance is mostly related to standardize testing.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

Standardized tests are reliable and objective measures of student achievement.

Standardize tests focus on important basic skills that all students need to master.

Stricter standards and increased testing are better preparing students for college.

Cons:

Standardize tests measure only a small portion of what makes education meaningful. …show more content…

Excessive testing may teach children to be good at taking a test, but does not prepare them for productive adult lives.

Statistics

According to neaToday, only 14% of Americans state that standardize testing is important and only 64% state that there’s too much emphasis on testing. There has been a debate between whether parents can excuse their children from standardize tests, where 41% of parents believe that they should be allowed to excuse their children and 44% believe that they should not. While 59% say they would not excuse their own child, because they know that most schools are looked at by the children’s test scores. Knowing this, 66% of Americans oppose using test scores to evaluate schools. (NeaToday)

Now that I have given you background information, statistics, and pros & cons, now what do you guys think?

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