Standardized Tests Are Setting Students Up to Fail in Life
Picture this: it’s 8:00 AM and you’re pulling into your school parking lot, running on little to no sleep and no breakfast, and now you have to take the dreadful 4 hour long ACT. This one test can hinder a students’ opportunity to graduate high school, or even ruin their chances of getting into their dream college. Why should such a meaningless test have such a big impact on children’s lives across the nation? The “standards” of these tests are unfair and can most definitely be questioned by the Rotary 4-Way Test. Standardized tests are not truthful, they are not fair to all that are concerned, they do not build goodwill and better friendships, and are most definitely not beneficial to all concerned. So, if these tests have a very small amount of benefits for children, why do schools continue to place so much emphasis on them?
Is standardized testing the truth? No, in no way is standardized testing truthful. It sets false standards and leaves no hope for success and accomplishment. Students are set up for failure when they are given tests in time pressured situations over content they have never learned before or haven’t learned in years. Many students put so much stress on how well they perform on the SAT, but is this little 4-digit number really that crucial for colleges to consider? The value that is put on the score of the SAT is not the truth, as it tests how well you can execute in such a short amount of time
Student Sudhanshu Pandey, was a happy, normal teenage boy who didn’t look like he would succumb into depression. On march 4, Sudhanshu seemed unusually reluctant to go school. Later than day his parents found him in his room hanging from the ceiling fan. Sudhanshu left a note, explaining how all the pressure and stress in his life from test exams has taken over. Not only has Sudhanshu Pandey been depressed and stressed from testing, its all over the world.
Should The SAT Determine Your Future Throughout the years there have been many questions regarding the reliability of the SAT. Should an aptitude test be such a large factor in college acceptance. I firmly believe The SAT should not be a factor in college admissions because it has proven to be biased , unreliable, and overall unjust. The Scholastic Aptitude test, or SAT is no stranger to high school students across America. The test is divided into two sections of math and verbal language skills, a total of 138 questions with a point scale ranging from 200-800.
A students ACT and SAT score is just one portion of many college applications. Colleges and Universities look at GPA, an essay, and letter of recommendations to determine a student’s admission. Many people believe that the importance of the ACT or SAT score depends on the college and what other things the student has to offer (Drinkworth, 2015). The ACT and SAT tests can be an important factor in college admissions because they tests are on all subject areas, math, reading, writing, and science. Since each area is graded separately and the score is later averaged out it shows how the students does overall in the general
Standard testing is a very controversial and important subject because it deals with the progression of the American education system. The practice of these assessments has been highly scrutinized not only for the way it has changed the format of classrooms, but also for its accuracy, pressure, and abundance. In 2001, standardized testing became federally mandated through the No Child Left Behind Act by former president George Bush Jr. According to research from the Council of the Great City Schools, students have been taking “an average of 113 tests from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade” (K. Hefling). These numbers have increased to the point where parents have opted for their children to not attend standardized exams.
The tests narrow down the curriculum to focus on the subjects that are on the test, forgetting about the other subjects. Standardized tests cannot measure all that schools teach like how to be a problem solver. Standardized tests have not improved America’s education system. Every once in a while the world will submit their schools performance and they will be ranked with
Standardized Testing: Making College Admissions “Fair” Every year , the daunting prospect of undergoing standardized testing brings anxiety to thousands of high school students, and for good reason: a student’s performance on standardized college admission exams - most importantly, the ACT and SAT - is a major determinant in deciding where they will go to college. For decades, such standardized tests have been universally accepted as part of the admissions process: proponents argue, as Syverson (2007) explains, that such tests are the only way of standardizing college admissions when students from different schools have such widely varying profiles. However, in the past several decades a growing anti-testing movement has begun to poke holes
Standardized Testing While can be beneficial, standardized testing isn't improving American education. Standardized testing evaluates only the individual performance of a student instead of the overall growth of a student over the course of a year. In my opinion, Standardized testing is not enhancing education in America. Not all students who are smart and take in all the information test well. For instance, there are many people who simply do not perform well on tests.
Going Against the Standard According to Tim Walker, “Only 14% of parents say standardized testing is important in measuring school effectiveness” (Walker). A standardized test is a test that is given in a consistent or “standard” manner. Standardized tests are designed to have consistent questions, administration procedures, and scoring procedures. When a standardized test is administered, it is done so according to certain rules and specifications so that testing conditions are the same for all test takers. They often provide some type of “standard score” which can help interpret how far a child score ranges from the average student (Johnson).
Standardized tests are very common in today’s modern society. They are used as a tool to measure a person’s performance and indicate how their estimated performance will be in a college class. Every year hundreds of students take the ACT or SAT in order to get accepted into their college of choice and to receive scholarships, but they fail to see the problems with these standardized tests. As more and more people take these tests, the national average score falls causing doubt in the extremely important system. This is leading people to question whether or not the ACT and SATs are accomplishing what they were created to do.
Standardized testing (SATs), in the United States has been present for years and has caused plenty of teachers, students, parents, and other individuals who are informed about it to have different perspectives and opinions on it. Before doing my research on the different opinions people had on standardized tests, I always believed they were encouraged by professors and school facilities. As a student myself and on the behalf of other students, standardized tests were always perceived to be stressful and unjust. Test taking was never a strength of mine especially if the test was timed because it just added more pressure to answer the questions quick. In high school, my teachers never discussed how they felt towards the SATs, which made
School’s are using standardized testing for the wrong reason. “A standardized test is any examination that’s administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner. There are two major kinds of standardized tests: aptitude tests and achievement tests” (Popham, 1999). The most common examples of aptitude tests are the SAT and the
Over recent years, the debate of whether or not to continue using standardized testing to evaluate college applicants has been somewhat controversial. Although college may not necessarily ensure success in the future, is not the only path in which success can be found, and is not a good path for every student, a majority of students that graduate high school want to go to college and need to know what it is they need to accomplish before their four years are up. Some of the colleges shifting to the idea of accepting applicants not based on test scores think that the potential to do well in college shouldn’t be based on these things. These argue that personal traits and characteristics are what determine success. Traits like these aren’t truly measurable though.
FW #5 A better alternative to standardized testing would be to use student portfolios in order to assess learning and growth. “A student portfolio is a systematic collection of student work and related material that depicts a student's activities, accomplishments, and achievements in one or more school subjects”(Scherba de Valenzuela). Using this system wouldn’t require kids to miss classes to take standardized tests, it’s a better representation of a student's learning during the year, and It increases self-motivation to learn and grow. It doesn’t take them out of class to take the test.
Many students either care too much about the tests, and therefore try to cheat, or they don’t care enough about the test, making the results worse than they normally would be. Ryan Deffenbaugh explains that one college, along with many others, no longer requires test scores for applicants because there were many arguments that “the scores are not a great indicator of future success in college, and that a billion-dollar-test prep industry creates an unfair playing field for students from families with lower incomes” (Deffenbaugh, 16). This college, Purchase College, is one of many that has the opinion of standardized tests being unreliable when accepting students. They don’t show true intelligence because anyone can get some luck when guessing. An article states, “Kids learn early on that they don 't have to think outside the box, they don 't have to be creative, collaborative or be critical thinkers.
As a student in high school did you ever feel like the standardized test are helping you or making you get in to a better college? Have you ever thought about how many hours students and teachers spend preparing for the standardized test? Many hours and studying are being put into those test but are they really effective and are the test doing the students good in life? Standardized tests are really just to effective, teachers and students spend too much time on them and it’s not doing the students any good, and even it’s not doing the teachers any good. Standardized tests in schools today in Ohio should be stopped because they are causing for teachers to be evaluated by the test results of how the students do on the tests, they are having the students more stressed about school and do they benefit you in colleges and university and do they really look at how well students do on them test.