Standardized Testing is NOT Effective Essay

Students dread the time of the year when they stop with their course material and begin to prepare for test. Everyone is in agreement that some type of revolution is needed when it comes to education; eliminating standardized test will aid the reform. The need for standardized testing has proven to be ineffective and outdated; some leading educationalist also believe this because the tests do not measure a student’s true potential. This will save money, stop labeling, and alleviate stress in students and teachers.

Standardized tests are exams that are supposed to measure a child’s academic knowledge but have long been a controversial subject of discussion. Although it is one method to see how a child is performing, is it the best method? Standardized testing can be biased or unfair, inhibit both the teacher’s and the children’s creativity and flexibility, affect funding for schools, cause untested subjects to be eliminated from the curriculum, and cause anxiety for children and teachers.

Standardized tests are unnecessary because they are excruciating to the minds of many innocent students. Each year, the tests get tougher and stricter until the students cannot process their own thoughts. The tests become torturous to the minds of those only starting in the world of tests. The students already battling in the war are continuing to fall deeper and deeper into the world of uncreativity and narrowness. As the walls narrow in on them, they are lost and unable to become innovative thinkers. Moreover, the implementation of standardized tests into the public school systems of the United States of America has controversially raised two different views –the proponents versus the opponents in the battle of the effectiveness of

Standardized testing has been ruling over the lives of students, making or breaking them in their education without fair judgement. Tests like the SAT and the ACT count for way too much when applying to colleges, which in turn limits the student 's capabilities to thrive in an environment that would benefit them. There are many problems within a standardized test that deems them to be unreliable as a true test of knowledge. Although designed to test groups of students on intelligence, standardized testing neglects to fairly acknowledge the abilities of each unique student which reflect their true capabilities.

Schools all over the nation have introduced standardized testing as a way to evaluate what the students have learned over the course of the school year. Exams can be administered online or on paper, depending on the subject. Test can be taken at different points of the school year; results can be used as a way to determine what areas are weaker than others. Most results are viewed by the school board, administrators, and teachers. In some schools students take one end of the year test with different subjects, other just takes one test. These tests can be graded by groups of people are computers. Standardized testing has become a part of America’s educational system and many don’t see the benefit of the test at all.

In classrooms all across America, students sit perched over their desks in the process of taking standardized tests. As the students take the tests, teachers pace nervously up and down the rows of their classroom, hoping and praying that their students can recall the information which they have presented. Some children sit relaxed at their desks, calmly filling in the bubbles and answering essay questions. These children are well prepared and equipped to handle their tests. Other children, however, sit hunched over their desks, pondering over questions, trying to guess an answer. They struggle to recall information that has been covered many times in class, but they can’t.

Education has been an important part of society for centuries. Over the years it has slowly evolved into what it is today. The topic of education has been controversial since the beginning. It seems as though there is always someone that sees a need for change in how students are being taught and assessed. More specifically, many people think that standardized testing is not an effective way to assess students. While on the other hand, many also believe that standardized testing is the most efficient and effective way to assess people of all ages. The debate over standardized testing has been shown to effect students and the community in many different ways. Standardized assessments have had huge impacts with both teachers and students. Whether one thinks standardized testing is effective and efficient or misdirecting and unproductive it is a big part of the educational system. While the argument may present that standardized tests leads to simulated knowledge, others argue that standardized tests are very effective in assessing students.

The use of standardized testing to measure students’ knowledge is an inaccurate reflection of their capabilities. By being forced to take a test that does not effectively show their abilities, students become overstressed, and the tests themselves do not promote true academic achievement. Rather than learning about subjects in order to gain knowledge, students simply memorize facts and formulas to get a decent test score. Standardized tests are not an appropriate measure of student performance, only benefit certain groups of students, and do not prepare students for the real world.

What once began as a simple test administered to students yearly to measure understanding of a particular subject has, as Kohn (2000) has stated, “Mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole” (p.1). Today’s students are tested to an extent that is unparalleled in not only the history of our schools, but to the rest of the world as well. Step into any public school classroom across the United States and it will seem as if standardized testing has taken over the curriculum. Day after day teachers stress the importance of being prepared for the upcoming test. Schools spend millions of dollars purchasing the best test preparation materials, sometimes comes at the cost of other important material. Although test

“A national 2007 study by the Center on Education Policy reported that since 2001, 44% of school districts had reduced the time spent on science, social studies and the arts by an average of 145 minutes per week in order to focus on reading and math. A 2007 survey of 1,250 civics, government, and social studies teachers showed that 75% of those teaching current events less often cited standardized tests as the reason.” (Standardized Tests Pros and Cons) Material that will not be on the test is not being taught which means that students are being limited to what they learned based on the test. This is causing teachers to begin teaching to the test. The term “teach to the test” means that students are not gaining any knowledge but what they will be tested on. In school, students have the right to be taught more than what will just be on the test. School is about growing and learning about the world around, and to help generations to come. Students are just being taught for a test, which makes the tests not a complete accurate measure of what a student can do

Standardized testing has been around for ages, but was not widely enforced until former President Bush put into law the No Child Left Behind Act. A standardized test is a major test that is administered to a large population of students that is graded in a standard manner. Recently, parents all over the country have been opting their children out of standardized testing, and for many justifiable reasons. Standardized testing should not be mandatory due to the fact that these tests do not accurately measure a student’s intelligence, they put students in a box, and they narrow the curriculum.

I would like to take the time to discuss the issues that standardized testing is causing college bound students. Standardized testing is an evaluation of a student's performance on one particular day and does not take into account factors that could affect the test such as, the students rest, nutrition, the testing environment, and emotions of the student.. Standardized testing has caused teachers to move to a way of teaching called “teach to the test”, which can overall hinder a student's learning potential, because they are simply learning the information for the test and will quickly forget what they learned. Along with other reasons, the “teach to the test” method has damaged students creativity and creates a boring learning environment.

Standardized testing alone is not an accurate gauge of a students overall knowledge. We start indoctrinating our children in the first grade with standardized testing to prepare them for the next 11 years of testing. These tests put a lot of undo stress on students to preform well on standardized tests throughout the year. While some students are excellent test takers others become over whelmed with the process and fail to rise to their true academic level. “On Mar. 14,

Today, it can be observed that society has shifted education drastically from the time schools were constituted, to now. Throughout history, schools have gone from private, where only the elite can attend, to public schools where virtually anyone can attend. One of the factors that goes along with education is standardized testing. Frederick J. Kelly, father of the standardized test, once said, “These tests are too crude to be used, and should be abandoned.” Not only has this shift occurred within education itself, but it has occurred within the testing concepts found within standardized testing so much so that the founder of these tests has chosen to give up on it.

A very current and ongoing important issue happening within the education system is standardized testing. A standardized test is any examination that's administered and scored in a calculated, standard manner. There are two major kinds of standardized tests: aptitude tests and achievement tests. Standardized aptitude tests predict how well students might perform in some subsequent educational setting. The most common examples are the SAT’s and the ACT’s. The SAT and the ACT attempt to estimate how well high school students will perform in college. But standardized test scores are what citizens and school board members rely on when they evaluate a school's effectiveness. Nationally, five such tests are in use: California Achievement Tests,