Standardized Testing: Is There Too Much at Stake?

This process leads to teacher evaluations. No one likes to be put under pressure in the classroom. To be put under pressure causes more stress than needed on the teachers behalf. How is a teacher supposed to make students perform proficiently on tests? There are many different cases that can cause a good student to have bad test results.

Attendance Affects Academic Success. HTR Media, 23 Oct. 2014. Web. 07 Nov. 2014. <http://www.htrnews.com/story/news/education/2014/10/23/attendance-affects-academic -success/17800299/>.

Parents and teachers do not fully understand the severity of social victimization by the bully in elementary education. The issue has been linked to poor academic performance, student’s committing suicide and even school shootings. The short term and long term effects on these young victims are countless. Parents and institutions must understand that quick and one-size-fits-all fixes will not address this issue completely. Education of this issue must be full spectrum, working from the bottom of the pyramid (the student), to the middle (the parent/teacher), to the pinnacle (the leaders in charge of running and developing the education systems).

Standardized tests are unfair because they fail to measure students' abilities, they cause an unnecessary amount of stress, and there are too many incentives to teach the test. Like Bert Lance one said, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” This is the way many people feel about standardized testing. To them the tests appear to be a reliable and harmless way to measure students’ skills. A June-July 2014 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 93% of parents say standardized tests "should be used to identify areas where students need extra help" and 61% say their children "take an appropriate number of standardized tests” (Ruby). The issue with those statistics is parents do not know the direct effects of standardized tests, so how could they possibly know the tests’ faults and damage it causes?

Standardized testing, as it is being used presently, is a flawed way of testing the skills of today’s students. Too much time is being devoted to preparing students for standardized tests. Parents should worry about what schools are sacrificing in order to focus on raising test scores. Schools across the country are cutting back on, or even eliminating programs in the arts, recess for young children, field trips, electives for high school students, class meetings, discussions about current events, the use of literature in the elementary grades, and entire subject areas such as science (if the tests cover only language arts and math) (Kohn Standardized Testing and Its Victims 1). Alfie Kohn, author of The Case against Standardized Testing, recalls a specific incident of how children are being cheated out of valuable class time.

Later I found out that whether or not I graduate depends on passing the test. The idea of standardized testing to say whether or not students graduate is a bad one. Not just bad for schools, principals, and teachers, but it can mean the end of a student’s future before it begins. That means not only does schools suffer, but everyone in our communities, states, and country suffers. It used to be that students had to take standardized tests every year.

While these advances are beneficial, standardized exams often hurt already disadvantaged schools, promote states to lower their standards of education, and cause schools to focus more on the exams themselves rather than on their students' actual learning (Karp). One of the major foundations of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, a national law requiring public schools to distribute standardized tests at least once a year, is that schools may be sanctioned by the federal government as a result of poor test grades. Obviously, this threat places an extraordinary amount of stress on schools to do well on their exams and holds teachers and administrators more accountable. However, it also causes teachers to teach the test rather than their curriculum, allowing students to perform better on exams without actually understanding the tested material (Karp). Test-teaching has become so common that students may actually take classes helping them to improve test scores, and whole days of public school are spent teaching kids better and faster ways to eliminate wrong answers (Gallagher).

He outlines these detrimental issues with eight facts. Standardized testing has gotten out of control and has become more of a detriment to our students. Students are being forced to follow a curriculum that prepares them for only major tests and leaves out vital instruction for things such as social skills. Kohn (2000) tells us with fact 1, that our students are being tested more than any other nation. Is this testing providing prominent information to our schools or is it just for show?

Aside from these arguments, standardized tests have been found to be becoming flawed and have poor design. Standardized tests should not be used to measure student proficiency. These tests are becoming much more challenging and high stakes, resulting in a significant amount of stress and anxiety in students. Standardized testing has become a huge weight on students which is leading to test anxiety. Jasmine Evans writes in her article “Problems With Standardized Testing,” from Education.com about critics of the No Child Left Behind, an act passed in 2001 one under the administration of George W. Bush, who say that there is a lot of pressure on teachers, students, and parents, and school officials as a result of these tests.

A standardized test is any examination that’s administered, and scored off of a scaled system. The two main standardized test in most high schools are achievement tests, and aptitude test(Abbott 2013). The stress put upon the teachers and students to do well on these test is an unrealistic amount. It also take an unnecessary amount of time out of the actual teaching and learning that is done in the classroom. The teachers are judged based on how the student 's score on the test, which could involve their jobs being put on the line.