In the mid 1900s, the ACT and SAT became a college admission device in America that would carry on to the present day. For high school students, junior year becomes a maelstrom of chaos in taking advanced courses and preparing to take college entrance examinations. In all, it is extremely time consuming, as over 1.6 million juniors prepare for the ACT around the United States and nearly 7 million individuals around the world prepare for the SAT by spending weekends and free time studying for these standardized tests (“About Us”; “What We Do”). A student’s entire education is put to the test, and eventually converted into a number that is allegedly able to tell how successful he or she will be in his or her first year of college. One Saturday exam could decide a student’s fate in further education, but no pressure, right? When put to the test, extensive research shows that these tests are not all they are cracked up to be. ACT and SAT examinations are not an accurate measure of students’ aptitude for college and should no longer be a requirement for college admissions.
For starters, one example of standardized tests not being an accurate measure of students’ aptitude for college, students of higher income families tend to do much better than those who are not. Many researchers and research groups have found trends in household income linking to the success in standardized testing. Fair Test, an organization whose goal is to promote and achieve fair and open testing for all, conducted a study this past year which proves this point. Of all the college-bound seniors in the class of 2013 who had taken the SAT, scores increased almost proportionally to family income. Test takers in the lowest family income range of $0 to $20,000 had an...
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...onski. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. At Issue. Rpt. From “Surviving without the SAT.” Chronicle of Higher Education 10 Oct. 2008. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 3 Feb. 2014.
National Poverty Center. “Poverty Facts: Poverty in the United States.” National Poverty Center. Regents of the University of Michigan. 2014. Web. 8 Feb. 2014.
Penn, Jeffery. “Standardized Testing Measures College Success.” Standardized Testing. Ed. Diane Andrews Henningfeld. Detriot: Greenhaven Press, 2008. At Issue. Rpt. From “Expert Says SAT is Reliable Predictor of College Success, New SAT Will Measure Writing Ability.” The New York Academy of Sciences. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 3 Feb. 2014.
“This House would abolish standardized tests for University Admission." idebate.org. 2 Mar 2012. idebate.org, Web. 05 Feb. 2014.
“What We Do.” ACT. ACT, INC. 2014. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.
In the article, Gregory Mantsio reveals a chart based on the test results of 1,465,744 SAT takers in the year of 2006. The chart given, displays the amount of the family income and how it affects the scores of those who had taken the SAT. The facts given, indicates that the more money the family has, income that the family receives, the higher the scores are. For example, if you had a job or career that allowed you to be able to bring in more than $100,000, then your child is more likely to receive a median score of approximately 1,100. But the question is, how can this be so? One reason is quite simple: The children born into a higher class has much more access to educational resources, are exposed to vocabulary and spoken language in their early childhood, and experience less stress than those who are in a lower class. Which in the long run, gives the children in the higher class a better chance when it comes to succeeding in life. Compared to those in a lower class whose scores are below the approximated amount of 1,100 due to their family
A scholarly journal written by an anonymous author sheds light on the importance of standardized testing by showing its efficiency in higher level education. This article provides a solid counterargument for the use of standardized tests which is standardized tests being a good source of predicting grades throughout college as well as whether students will stay long enough to graduate. It is also able to establish that the SAT is effective in forecasting a grade-point average through the fourth year as well as predicting students study habits. The
... a tedious process, but the change can have immense, positive effects for the future college student. The ACT and SAT that supposedly measure a student's learning potential through multiple-choice questions should be replaced by a test of a student's desire to learn determined through the analysis of essays, recommendation letters, and school or community involvement. This change can result in a more academically motivated freshman class. Standardized testing in its current form does not accurately measure most students' learning potential. It does not allow for diversity and creates a huge hurdle for many potential academic achievers. An adjustment to a diverse, open testing format of the ACT or SAT and a stress on the student's other academic accomplishments can accurately measure the student's desire to learn, therefore measuring the student's learning potential.
"Former Bates College Dean of Admissions, William Hiss, said that intelligence is so complex, varied, and multifaceted that “no standardized testing system can be expected to capture it”(Westlund). Throughout the years standardized testing has changed its purpose and not for the better. In the late 1930s, the goal of taking standardized test was to award scholarships to "diamond in the rough" students (Westlund). Currently, the whole idea of taking the SAT or ACT is getting admitted into a college. Standardized test should not be a deciding factor of being admitted into a college.
Standardized tests are biased to certain students whether it is race, or even how much money the parent(s) earn. According to Standardized Testing and Its Victims by Alfie Kohn, the tests are a lot easier for children coming from richer communities like Dublin for example, then Cleveland where funding is scarce (Kohn, 2000). It is not just a rich and poor battle it also is a battle with students and regional or language barriers. According to Uyen Zimmerman, my former math instructor from Dublin Coffman, explained English as a second language students interpret asked questions phrased strangely to them differently than a student whose primary language is English. For example, she said there was a question on the ACT that asked a question about folding pizza and an ESL student thought that it meant putting pizza into a folder. Another example is asking students about black ice when students in states such as Hawaii and Louisiana, have never seen or heard of black ice (Zimmerman, 2014). I agree with her completely. All standardized tests are playing with what the creators of the test think is a “standard” and testing all students across America with the exact same questions.
Standardized tests cover certain material, which gives teachers something specific to teach. This is helpful, in that it allows teachers to know exactly what to teach. It also sets up a goal for the teachers, which is to get the students to pass. However, this process leaves something to be desired. Because the test is so important to the future of the students, teachers, and school, helping students to pass test becomes the most important part of their schooling. This restricts the educators from teaching students about things that are more important. College is usually next step for students after high school so it would seem logical that high school prepares them for college, but teachers are so busy preparing students for the test that they are not preparing them for the future. Consequently, students arrive at college ill-prepared, with shallow educations (Gitlin).
Thousands of students around the country and around the world will be preparing for the SAT and ACT tests while trying to maintain a high GPA. These tests will potentially have a significant impact on students' lives. Some will be taking these tests for the second or even third time to get that 1500 out of 1600 or that 33 out of 36, that they long desire. These flawed tests are not truly able to measure how well students will perform in college as they are supposedly used to predict. A single test that students have to wake up for at six, seven in the morning on a Saturday and travel to some random location to take a difficult test should not impact the student's chance of getting into college, let alone predict how well they will do in college.
Today, in the United States, standardized tests are administered every year by states to their Kindergarten-12th grade public school students. Different states place different weight on their standardized testing results where some states differ their funding based on results and annual improvement, whereas other states allow schools to simply gauge where their students are scoring relative to other schools in the state. These tests, however, are only standardized within one state. One of the few tests standardized throughout the entire country is the SAT, the Scholastic Aptitude Test, administered by College Board and required by, “More than 800 of the nation’s colleges and universities,” (Comras, 1984). This test will be the standardized test focused on in this paper. While standardized testing is that, standardized, and enables the comparison of one student to another, the meaning of the score does not equate to a test of intelligence. Therefore, while standardized testing should be applied in the education system, it needs to be more indicative of the material learned in school and should hold less weight than it currently does in the college admissions process.
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.
Standardized tests, such as the SAT and the SOL, have been implemented for many years now for individuals in grade school to take. The SOL’s, or Standards of Learning tests, are Virginia’s version of standardized tests that students are required to take in order to pass a class, evaluating their knowledge on a specific subject. SOL’s are mandatory for students to take as soon as they reach third grade. Additionally, the SAT is a test taken in the final years of high school that colleges look at when comparing students for post-secondary school. People concerned with student’s education can come to the common consensus that education is important and there should be some way to compare a student’s achievements to one another. However, the process
Thus for standardized testing to be legitimate, that statement must be true, otherwise standardized testing would be a very expensive and pointless test. In a study conducted by William Hiss, he sampled 33 universities and over 123,000 students and concluded that SAT scores are a poor predictor of college performance which he defines as college culminated GPA over the years. By plotting a scatterplot that compares college GPA with SAT scores, he found no reliable correlation between SAT scores and college GPA. In fact, studies undertaken by the College Board indicate that the SAT adds only modestly to the prediction of student’s success. Interestingly, Hiss found out that high school GPA is the best predictor of college GPA. According to Hiss, “kids who had low or modest test scores, but good high school grades, did better in college than those with good scores but modest grades.” (Hiss) Hiss elaborated on this saying “a pattern of hard work, discipline and curiosity in high school shows up ‘as highly predictive, in contrast to what they do in three or four hours on a particular Saturday morning in a testing room.’”(Hiss) Looking at high school grades shows much more information that just how well the student did in a particular class. It shows whether the students were challenging themselves with advance placement class and
Such tests reward quick answers to superficial questions. They do not measure the ability to think deeply or creatively in any field. Their use encourages a narrowed curriculum, outdated methods of instruction, and harmful practices such as grade retention and tracking. “Standardized testing can be wrongfully used as fuel for those with political agendas. This is a sad reality far too often across all levels of the political realm. Education is a hot political topic and rightfully so, but the center of this debate is often standardized test scores. “(Meador)
Popham, W. James. “Standardized Achievement Tests: Misnamed and Misleading.” Education Week. September 2001. Web. 28 June 2015.
“If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn't be here. I guarantee you that.” This quote by Michelle Obama illustrates the idea that standardized testing should not have such a large influence on education in America. However, a majority of people are under the impression that standardized tests are an accurate method to measure a person's intellectual ability. I believe that standardized tests have developed into a very critical part of the American education system that is hindering the growth of students and teachers instead of providing a tool that can accurately measure knowledge.