standardized tests

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Recommended: Standardized tests are not fair

Standardized tests. We’ve all heard of them. Most of us have taken them, and hopefully passed them. But how many of us really know what they are. In other words, what exactly is a “standardized test”? If you ask a hundred teachers or other members of the educational community, you might get 50 different answers. The truth is, according to a well-respected glossary of educational terms, the definition of a standardized test is “any form of test that (1) requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions, from (a) common bank (of) questions, in the same way, and that (2) is scored in a ‘standard’ or consistent manner, which makes it possible to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of students.” (QTD Great Schools Partnership). The questions are usually multiple choice in nature and they are graded the exact same way. This makes it possible to compare data from person to person and year to year.
Standardized tests can trace their beginning to just over a hundred years ago, in 1905, when a French psychologist by the name of Alfred Binet was conducting studies of human intelligence. In order to further his studies, Mr. Binet developed the first standardized test to determine the relative levels of intelligence in his test subjects. A version of the test that he used was then developed to create the current IQ test that is often given to determine a person’s intelligence. (Dan Fletcher)
Once standardized tests became more popular, institutions of higher learning realized that they could be used to compare students from various backgrounds and geographic locations. And thus, standardized college entrance tests began in 1926. The first one to be developed was called the Schol...

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...on that one hour, a teacher’s effectiveness is based upon that same hour. There are no considerations for the mood of the student, or how seriously each student approaches the test. Each teacher is eventually evaluated on the overall scores of the class.
Standardized tests are designed to show you and the teachers where you are as far as learning skills go. They have pros and cons, but in the end, they are just there to help the education system. And they determine how far in life you will go. Meaning, you have to take standardized tests to get into some universities and one of the requirements to graduate high school is to pass the standardized tests. So, no matter how much parents, students, or even teachers think the standardized tests are unfair, they are only there to help us and we need them in order to make sure we are getting the education that we deserve.

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