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Arguments Against Standardized Testing

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It is fifth hour, math class. I walk into the classroom and see that on the assignment board it says “None.” A weight is lifted off of my shoulders. No math homework tonight? I could jump for joy. But then, I see “STAR Testing Today” scrawled in my teacher’s handwriting. STAR testing, today? It can’t be today. STAR stands for “Standardized Testing And Recording," and it’s just another form of standardized testing, the bane of every student’s existence. Why is it that students agonize over standardized testing so much? It’s because the students know that hardly any growth comes from them and that they are often unreliable measures of intelligence or ability. On Opinionator, an opinion-sharing site maintained by the New York Times, Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, wrote, “It is entirely possible for a student to fail a test, but still have... the knowledge that we want," meaning that poor test results are not …show more content…

dropped from 18th place in the world for math to 31st, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), with a similar drop in science and no change in reading. If standardized tests are supposed to help students achieve, why did we drop 13 places? Meanwhile, China is ranked first by PISA for math, reading, and science, and their students take even more tests than the ones in America. Some might say that the U.S needs to increase testing even more to match up, but what good would it do? The types of tests that we take don’t cover what we are expected to know. Students need assessment that is balanced between what they already know, and what teachers want them to know. Rather than a test with the same questions, even if the questions are leveled differently for all students, the questions should address where a student is struggling, so that each and every American schoolchild would have the chance to reach their full

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