High Stakes Testing

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High Stakes Testing

Albert Einstein once stated, “not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.” High-stakes testing attempts to determine the knowledge a person has obtained throughout grades K-12. These standardized tests are being used to judge a person’s ability to graduate from high school and also judge if a child has enough knowledge to proceed to the next grade level. Throughout this paper, I will be discussing how these tests do not accurately portray one’s intelligence, how they have increased drop out rates, and also show the damaging psychological affects they have had.

High stakes testing does not accurately determine a student’s intelligence. In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences researched the appropriate and inappropriate uses of tests. They agreed that “no single test score can be considered a definitive measure of a student’s knowledge”(http://www.allianceforchildhood.net/news/histakes_test_position_statement.htm).

To use these standardized tests to decide if a person has earned his/her diploma is unreasonable, and they have been proven ineffective. The Alliance for Childhood states that, “the use of standardized tests as the sole measure of whether students are promoted, are placed in low-track classes, or will graduate from high school is condemned as insupportable by every professional testing organization.”(alliance). In Arizona, the AIMS (Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards) test will soon be used in this way; high school seniors in the year 2008 must pass this test to graduate. A study prepared by the Arizona Standards organization states that, “the Arizona AIMS test, if implemented today, would fail between 50% and 75% of all high s...

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... Standards (AIMS). Arizona Department of Education. Retrieved October 24, 2002 from the World Wide Web:

http://www.ade.state.az.us/ standards/aims/PerformanceStandards/performancelevels.asp

2. Testing and Grade Retention. Retrieved October 24, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://www.fairtest.org/arn/retenfct.htm

3. High Stakes Testing Position Statement. Alliance for Childhood. Retrieved October 24, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://www.allianceforchildhood.net/news/histakes_test_position_statement.htm

4. Haney, Walt. The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education. Retrieved October 24, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://www.epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41/

5. What’s Wrong With High Stakes Testing in General and Aims in Particular? Retrieved October 24, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://www.azstandards.org/protestmaterials.htm

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