Standardized Testing Argument Essay

Thank you so much for taking your time out of your very busy days to join us. It is always wonderful to share thoughts with people of your expertise, especially on a subject that affects my everyday life. Education is paramount to achieving success, and living in the modern world. In my school we take several standardized tests that are supposed to measure how much knowledge I’ve retained throughout the year. These exams have changed the way that children are taught, and have made public schools int a limited learning environment. In fact 70 percent of educators surveyed in 2015 say that tests are not developmentally appropriate. Furthermore many students suffer a great deal of stress because of standardized tests.What’s most shocking is that instead of lower income schools getting better after tests were implemented they have actually gotten worse.

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. A student's character should be a factor in their acceptance to college, but this must be supplemented with grades and standardized tests scores.

Michal is a boy born in Florida who has some special needs. He was born with a brain stem, but not a whole brain. He loves to hear and listen to people talk to him, yet he is morosely incapable of sight, speech, or even understand basic information. He was forced to take an alternate version of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. This year he will be forced to take this test again. He is not alone. This New York times article from February 13, 2014 goes on to give an example of another case. This time it is the story of Andrea Rediske, a Florida parent of a child who is slowly dying from a life burdened by brain damage and cerebral palsy. The state tried to force this child, Ethan, to take this test. In the meantime while Andrea was fighting the school system, Ethan Rediske passed away. It doesn’t have to be this way. Our children aren’t all dying of terrible diseases, but these standardized testing is killing our brothers and sisters creativity and passion for school instead.

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. In New York State,

Today more and more people are going to college. Most people go to college to build their knowledge and to study a specific field that they want to get a job in some day. College is marketed to most people as a creative place where they will learn everything they need to know to get a job and enter the “real world”. As college students right now, don’t get us wrong we do learn many things but, we have found that in many classes we take, we just focus on getting a good grade or a passing grade. At the end of the semester we walk out of some class barely learning a thing because we retain information just long enough to do good on a test or exam and then forget it all together when the class is done. This can sometimes be blamed on the student and how much they want out of a class but many times this is just way students are taught to learn and how they have always gotten through school. College’s need to take note of this problem and find a way to change it. Today’s education system and colleges are too focused on letter grades and not the betterment of students and expanding their knowledge.

Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, once said that, “sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent students do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.” These tests have been a part of American education since the mid-1800s(Is the Use), but now, many people are starting to realize that standardized tests are not as convenient as they thought they were. In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act required all schools in the United States to test students in grades two through twelve annually in reading, math, and science(Is the Use). But since then, the U.S. has dropped from 18th in the world in mathematics to 36th, with a similar change in science as well. On the other hand,

Standardized testing has not improved education in America. Standardized tests have been issued in schools all across the nation for years now. Some people like them and some people don’t. They do not help the student learn more information than they would without the tests. The U.S. has dropped from 18th highest scores in schools in the world to be in the 30’s on almost all of the subjects on the test. 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.

Teach. Test. Repeat. This is the simplified modification of teaching being done in a high school now-a-days. “We are going to take a pop-quiz,” are words that most probably will not be spoken in a real-life job after college is over. Instead, the boss will present a problem and expect its employees to come up with solutions to this problem , anticipated to be presented for discussion later that week. It is expected, in whatever career, to know simple skills like problem solving and even how to write a well-educated report based on research. Many schools have switched over to standardized testing as an accurate measure of a student’s, teacher, and a school’s success. However, evidence shows that standardized tests lead to stress, most importantly,

Students may become overwhelmed while studying for and taking the test in the high-stress situation that standardized testing creates, clouding their ability to complete questions ("Maths + Anxiety = Poor Test Performance And Cognitive Function, Says Researcher." para 9). Furthermore, standardized testing also does not acknowledge differences in economic backgrounds of students. Students from affluent families with educated parents possess a great advantage in resources and tend to live in areas with better public schools. Therefore, they score better on standard examinations (Bhattacharyya, Junot, and Clark para. 10). Those who come from different educational backgrounds or possess different learning styles require distinct approaches in teaching that a standardized gauge of knowledge does not allow. In addition to these inaccurate measurements, standardized testing does not provide useable information to teachers. Effective assessments should gather feedback that teachers can use to the benefit of students, such as insight into a student’s way of learning and thinking ("Standardized Testing Has Serious Limitations." para. 10). Standardized testing does not compile accurate or intuitive information, therefore proving impractical to educators and

3. Standardized testing causes severe testing in young students. Many students burnout in high school due to anxiety and stress over the need to do well on their SATs and ACTs. This takes away from their teenage life and ruins one’s childhood. Also, during the test many students vomit or cry due to anxiety. In Sacramento, vomiting on tests is so common that explicit directions are written in the Stanford-9 exam on what to do if you vomit on the

In America, there is quite a lengthy history of standardized testing. It all began in 1838 when the American education system began to form ideas of having tests that would be transformed into formal measures of student academic achievement. They were originally created to hopefully show student improvement and academic knowledge, which is also their most common use up to today. The commonly dreaded standardized test, the ACT, was created in order to help more colleges improve their enrollment numbers, and colleges needed a new standardized test in order to do so. But lately, these forms of standardized testing seem to be causing damage to students. To conclude. whether it be mentally, physically, or emotionally, these tests have been wearing

Over two hundred parents claim to not let a student go through standardized testing. The earliest records of standardized testing come from China, for the subjects of philosophy and poetry. America “copied” the European education system. In the early 20th century, immigrants took “standardized tests”. To determine possible career and where each person stood socially. Testing is around 115 years old; it started being taken seriously in academics in the early 1900s for the United States. Although it seems minor, standardized testing should not be a thing in any type of school because it causes physical and mental stress for students and teachers, causes a major financial strain in many schools, and takes time to complete and prepare for.

Today I will talk about how standardized tests should be modified. I will be talking about how standardized tests are taking up too much class time and they need to be shorter. Standardized tests should be shorter they take up too much time and children have no fun at all with just worrying about the test. Standardized tests take all the fun out of a child's day. This essay will persuade the reader the the government needs to modify the test’s because they are taking up too much time, they are sucking the joy out of children because they have to worry about the tests, and that the test just repeats what they already tested on.

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.

Standardized testing has become one of the most popular types of testing in U.S. public schools to date. Students take numerous standardized tests throughout their childhood schooling. (Studies show that a typical student takes an average of 112 mandated standardized tests between Pre-K and 12th grade.) While standardized testing is one of the main procedures that Universities use to judge incoming students, it is not proven to be the most effective way to convey a student’s actual intelligence level. The U.S. should not focus so heavily on standardized testing because it is not a complete accurate measurement of a student’s intelligence.