Standardized Testing Persuasive Essay

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A student wakes up early in the morning to take a test in school that will decide important aspects of his future education. During the test, beads of sweat drip down the bridge of his nose as the painstaking hours of testing are beginning to overwhelm him. He knows the pressure is on to do good as he carefully uses the number two pencil to fill in the small bubble letter “c” for the fifth time in a row. The student is experiencing a standardized test. Standardized testing is seen in schools across the world. The tests are supposed to be an objective measurement of a student’s abilities. However, standardized tests are not benefitting the educational system because of the differences between students, subjectivity, and over testing.
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Human judgement plays a large role in standardized testing when determining the questions and the presentation of the questions (Liberty Concepts). Test developers have to create the questions and decide the level of difficulty. Students taking the same test receive different questions, yet the questions are suppose to be similar and of the same degree of difficulty. Bias is going to be seen when two different questions are considered to be the same. The bias can create an unfair advantage for some students. The order in which the questions are given can also affect a student. For instance, a difficult question at the beginning of the test may discourage a student or cause a student to spend too much time on that one question. Another student may see the same difficult question at the end of a test when the question will not distract them from the rest of the test. An argument presented by Phelps conveys the point that standardized tests remove the discrepancy in grading between different teachers. Despite that the grading process of standardized tests is not completely free of bias. Test developers make a decision on what is considered a passing score. “A decision that can affect how many students pass or fail, or how many achieve a level of performance considered to be proficient” (Liberty Concepts). The score set as a passing score is based on human subjectivity. The fact that standardized tests are not completely fair and objective is not beneficial to students and their

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