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The effects of standardized tests on students
Effects of standardized testing on students
The effect of standardized testing
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INTRODUCTION
In the United States, college is the path to success. A college degree has not mattered more at any other point in US history. A college degree allows for one to pursue their dreams in whatever field they choose, more opportunities than a high school diploma alone would allow. College is also a gateway for those less fortune economically to succeed in life through continuing their education. In recent years there has been an influx of high school students applying to colleges in search of better jobs in the future. Because of the increase in college applicants admissions officers have been relying more and more on SAT scores to make admission decisions. Two years ago “1.6 million students took the SAT” which has increased in recent years (Lewin). With the increased amount of students applying to colleges it is more difficult for admission officers to choose good, well rounded applicants. College admission officers and colleges “set a cutoff SAT […] score below which students will not be considered for admission” (“The SAT isn’t the Problem”). Standardized tests have become the crutch that admissions officers rely on to choose perspective students. There have been many criticisms of the SAT in general which has led the CollegeBoard to change the format of the test multiple times. The general deciders for college admittance are the SATs, high school grades, high school rank, entrance essays, and extracurricular activities, in that order. Standardized test such as the SATs “continue to be used as an objective measure for college admittance” even with the flaws that come with the use of them (Deerman et al.). This shows that this standardized test has great influence in America, whether positive or negative. Though SA...
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...T PREDICTS COLLEGE SUCCESS, STUDY SAYS."Chicago Tribune 6 May 2001: A18. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.
Lewin, Tamar. "Testing, Testing." The New York Times. The New York Times, 03 Aug. 2013. Web. 04 Apr. 2014.
Owen, David, and Marilyn Doerr. "Brains." None of the Above: The Truth Behind the SATs, Revised and Updated. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. 210+. Print
Prois, Jessica. "Does the SAT Have A Racial Bias?" The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 25 Apr. 2011. Web. 09 Apr. 2014.
"The SAT Isn't the Problem. It's How the Exam Is Used." USA Today 14 Mar. 2014: 10A.Biography in Context. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.
"Standardized Tests." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Ed. William Darity, Jr. 2nd ed. Vol. 8. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. 95-98. Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
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.
According to statistics published by Finley (2002), of the results from the 2001 SAT's, the average verbal score for African Americans and Hispanics was 433, while for whites it was 529, and the average math score for African Americans and Hispanics was 426, while for whites it was 531. This is a big difference by about 200 points. The comparison between African American and Hispanic scores with white scores can make a big difference in the student body of colleges who place a big emphasis on SAT scores. In 1997, the dean of Berkeley said, "We have evidence that the SAT lost us two thousand Latino students this year alone." (Zwick, 1999). This shows that even in 1997, just three years after the SAT was revised, educators were still seeing problems with it.
According to Robert Jackson in . “Retooling education: Testing and the Liberal Arts” Colleges who changed their admission by making the SAT optional have directed their aims into a more high school grade based admission. This solution is the only true measurement we have at the moment and it is a better measurement than the SAT states Robert Jackson. The writer also goes on to say scholastic aptitude should be abolished, as it has no true value or indicator of student’s ability. A more precise measurement based on four years of schoolwork is a pretty good indicator of student’s ability. It gives equal playing field for all students from their freshmen year in high school until their senior year in high school. Students have equal opportunities to perform giving them four years to accomplish good grades for college admissions. this method gives unprivileged students the opportunity to go to college who previously could not attend college because of SAT Prep cost. Also this method benefits college admissions by providing an indicator on how students will perform in college classes making it easy to admit or deny
"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.
Evans, Donia. "The Case Against Standardized Tests." The Meridian Star. 24 Nov. 2013. The Meridian Star. 01 Dec. 2013 .
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.
Some students simply do not test well, others try their hardest and still cannot reach the impracticable standards set for them. The individuals who create these tests do not understand the pressures of being a student, or the struggle to answer thirty-five questions in a compressed time period. One test cannot accurately measure the intelligence of a student.
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 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
Designed to measure the math, reading and writing skills necessary to predict college success, The SAT Reasoning Test is the most popular and widely accepted exam used for college entrance available today. A team of U.S. colleges developed its earliest form, known as the College Entrance Exam, in 1901. This essay-only test was designed for students applying to colleges to take one entrance exam instead of separate exams for each university. In 1926, the College Entrance Exam became the SAT (Student Aptitude Test). The test was formatted to multiple-choice in order to objectively assess a student’s college readiness while giving all students an equal opportunity for success. Since then, the title of the test was changed again to no longer stand for Student Aptitude Test due to the multifaceted purpose of the test. Published by the Educational Testing Service, the current title of the test, “SAT”, is just an acronym that no longer stands for anything. Still, the SAT has been constantly developing to best assess student scholarly performance (“History of the Tests”, 2014).
Data on SAT scores by race shows that White test-takers perform significantly better than all racial minorities with exception of Asians. African-Americans consistently perform most poorly on the SAT. One possible explanation is bias in question construction. The SAT uses an experimental section to test questions that may be used for the future. If they don’t test well, they are scrapped. If they do, they are placed on future tests. Jay Rosner analyzed 276 verbal and math questions from the 1998-2000 SATs. He discovered what he calls “Black questions,” which more Blacks than Whites answered correctly on the experimental sections. These questions never make it into the scored sections and instead, the SAT contains “White questions” (Rosner). Rosner argues that the questions are geared toward Whites, as test developers are mandated to recreate the norm, and the norm is White males outperforming their peers. Another form of racial bias that has been researched is Differential Item Functioning (DIF). A DIF question is one in which students “matched by proficiency” and other factors have variable scores, predictably by race, on selected questions. Santelices and Wilson found in 2010 that the SAT has these DIF questions, and
One widely held explanation for the achievement gap in test performance between Black and White students is that the tests are either culturally or racially biased. Jencks (1998) points out three types of biases...
Popham, W. James. “Standardized Achievement Tests: Misnamed and Misleading.” Education Week. September 2001. Web. 28 June 2015.