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Standardized testing in education
The benefits of standardized tests
Negative effects of standardized testing
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Standardized tests are reliable and objective measures of student achievement.The statewide tests should be abolished because if you're a strate A student and you have one bad testing day your grades blow up in your face. All because you had one bad day you are seen as a imperfect student. They stress kids out and caus them to freake out on testing day. Not to mention the cost of getting the test cost a lot up to 1.1 billion dollars and they need to thing is all that money worth putting kids through the tests when they could be using the money to help the school programs get better edgicatinal systems and or supplies. The schools that do the best get more talked about in political events as if all schools are as such. Standardized
In the United States of America, Standardized testing has become a way of life for students and children, especially in public schools. Many argue that standardized testing does not measure the students as a whole, takes up valuable classroom time, and creates drastic mental health problems in students and teachers. In recent years, a controversy surrounding the idea of standardized testing has been brought forth as something that needs to be changed or adapted to the growing needs of today’s students and this can be examined when exploring the negative effects, the testing has had on society’s future.
Others believe that the states data is incomplete and inaccurate, and consequently schools were being graded on data that was faulty. It does not seem fair to me to judge a school and post inaccurate information of that school in the papers.
Standardized testing assesses students, teachers, and the school itself, which puts a great deal of pressure on the students. High scores show that the school is effective in teaching students, while low test scores make teachers and schools look as though they are not teaching the students properly. This is not always the case. There are teachers who do teach students what they need to know to pass the test, but their students are still unprepared. Although teachers try to improve instruction, student performance is still variable to other factors that the school cannot control.
Many times after taking a standardized test, neither the teacher or student are able to see the test to determine what questions the examinee got correct or incorrect. Because of this, teachers and students do not know what areas need more more practice. Each year money is wasted on standardized tests that could be put towards more useful things to help excell a student in their education. Andrew Ujifusa is a reporter for Education Week. He covers education policy at the federal and state levels and writes for the Politics K-12 blog. He states, “The report...calculates that the test spending by 44 states and the District of Columbia amounted to $65 per student on average in grades 3-9 based on the most recent test-cost data the researchers could gather.” (Ujifusa pg.1). Each year schools around America are wasting money on standardized tests for no reason. The money spent on standardized testing should be used for more pressing education matters, not wasted away on a single test for each student. Standardized tests cost schools about a quarter of 1 percent the total k-12 spending, or $1.7 billion annually. (Ujifusa pg.1). Schools are spending an unnecessary amount of money on standardized tests, often times these tests can be scored inaccurately. There is no point in wasting money on standardized
Almost state has gained federal funding from accumulating the test data from all of their schools (Ravitch 107). Data collected from multiple choice questions determines the intelligence of every student and their teachers. The test data is tracked throughout their lifetime in relation to their test scores, graduation dates and other statistics companies such as Amazon and Microsoft use to evaluate different groups (by age, ethnicity, etc) as a whole (Ravitch 107). Ravitch claims there are many problems with this, mainly, tests do not measure character, spirit, heart, soul, and potential (112). Not everyone is the same, and just because one may be weak in math or writing doesn’t mean they’re not smart, resourceful individuals with much to share with the world. For schools to be even seen with a slight amount more than just their test scores, they have to be in great standings with their students’ average test results. The government’s intense focus on test results hurts schools’ ability to be a well-rounded school immensely. In contrast to federal’s pinpoint focus on what students learn, educated consumers desire their kids to have a full, balanced, and rich curriculum (Ravitch 108). Schools need to be more than housing for test-takers. The Education Board may claim students’ proficiency in their testing makes them better people, prepares them for college, and ultimately, the workforce. What they are
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.
... the ability to govern themselves, if they are to have the ability to contribute to society, and be able to succeed in life, a proper education must be made available to them. Not an education of learning how to take tests, but one of knowledge. An education given to them that teaches them how to apply mathematics in their lives, to use the sciences to understand the world around them, and to be able to read an article, not only to read it, but to be enlightened by its meaning. The Public School is a place that students should want to go, hunger to go. It should not be a place of stress or fear due to an upcoming test. It needs to be a place where all have the freedom and opportunity to learn. Standardized Tests had their moment in time, now the focus needs to be turned to a more in-depth understanding of education by applying what is taught to our everyday lives.
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.
The Standardized Testing System, instituted in the public school system, has been used as a guideline in assessing a student’s comprehension of the subjects taught in the classroom and for measuring a teacher’s aptitude of relating the subject material to the students (Fletcher). Florida has instituted a new Bill SB-736 that will now no longer grant teacher’s tenure, and will use the scores from the FCAT to decide whether a teacher will keep their job. While originally created to help the school system, standardized testing has been shown to have many problems, and even to cause harm to students, teachers, and schools. The standardized testing system must be severely revamped, as well as the way the scores affect the schools the students attend.
General testing in today's school systems has a negative effect upon the actual learning of the students. Standardized testing narrows school curriculum, labels children as failures at a young age, and uses money that could possibly be used in a more productive manner.
Standardized Tests restrict student learning in the classroom (Cole, Hulley, and Quarles 17). The teachers in a classroom cannot teach what they would like to teach, but rather they are forced to teach what will be on the test. Often, when teachers teach what will be on the test, many students will begin to zone out and do other things, rather than listen to the teacher drill them with memorization for the tests (Willis 59) Teachers are graded based on how well their students do on these standardized tests, so they will teach only what is going to be on the test, to keep their jobs, or even get raises. Whenever this happens, students are hurt because they lose out on many opportunities to learn, and they even lose critical thinking skills. The testing curriculum often also places too many goals for students and teachers to reach, which will force them to move more quickly and not properly address every topic (Popham 71). Which, in the long run with further encourage only teaching the test, and nothing else.
Even way back then, the whole thinking of giving more money to schools that score higher than schools that score lower seemed like a really dumb way to do things. Now, students have to do testing every time they turn around. The testing not only affects the money the government gives to the school district. It affects the individual students much more. Students that test low are not able to graduate even though they have completed and passed all of their classes.
Many people agree that standardized tests are a reasonable evaluation of a student’s capability. Standardized tests originated in the mid-1800s, in the American education system. W. James Popham defines standardized testing by “any test that’s administered, scored, and interpreted in a standard, predetermined manner” (“Is the Use of…,” 2013). After the No Child Left behind Act (NCLB) came about in the early 2000s, the use of standardized testing became popular. NCLB required yearly testing for specific grades and subjects. If schools did not demonstrate adequate improvement, they were either closed or run by the state. This was done so the state and the tax payers of the schools knew that students were learning and knowing the material. Tax payers especially wanted to make sure their money was going to good use (“Is the Use of…,” 2013). High scores on standardized tests can result in funding for the school, along with bonuses to the facility and staff of the school.
This argument goes along with the other two mentioned and explained above. There isn’t much that is positive to say about these assessments. It places so much pressure on students to perform well and pressure on teachers to teach what is going to be on the test. This brings negative energy to classrooms. An article by Greg Jouriles helps explain why we don’t need these tests. He claims, “Standardized tests are unnecessary because they rarely show what we don’t already know” (Jouriles, Greg). He also goes on to explain that one’s test score isn’t reliable and that we should trust the teachers when grades are published. A school system can accurately judge the students in the school on what they are good at better than the standardized tests do. They can break down many different aspects of what students need to improve on and what they are already knowledgeable of. Students need to learn more than just the test information. Only studying and learning test material makes students less diverse and leads to boring lectures in the classroom. Another article written by an organization called Fairtest adds, “Some students simply do not test well. Many students are affected by test anxiety or do not show their learning well on a standardized test, resulting in inaccurately lower scores” (Fairtest). These tests punish students for what they can’t control, making them stressed and panicked that they won’t graduate or move on to the next grade. Some children are from low-income families attending schools with large classes with little to no materials for learning what is on the test. In addition to that, some teachers have never been educated on test content, which is not their fault, and this results in low-test scores. This all leads to why there are such negative feelings throughout classrooms of many
the most success. The schools with the highest success rate of scores on these tests can then be