Reagan Tidmore
Mrs. Farrah Hayes
English 101
12 November 2017
Are ACT scores necessary for college application?
Have you ever heard of anyone saying they enjoyed the ACT or that they felt as though they did amazing on it? No one has. Whenever a student walks into a testing room they should go in feeling prepared and confident in their knowledge. Whenever a student applies to college they should do so with joy because they are starting a new chapter of their lives. Instead students are becoming more stressed out about school, standardized test scores and college applications every year. The government has a goal to help all students to succeed in school, but all that is seen today is ineffectiveness and worried students. Standardized tests are
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There are results though that show that the ACT produces inconsistent results or no results at all, providing us with the claim that they are a hindrance and do not help provide a student’s success. The program that enforces standardized test is the Congress issued program, No Child Left Behind. This program pushes that all students have an equal chance at succeeding in high school and that all students be encouraged and pushed to bring home good grades. It is stated in a research article that “Overall, 45% of the public, and about the same percentage of parents with children in public schools (43%) – say the law overemphasizes standardized testing, based on those have heard a lot or a little about No Child Left Behind” (Heimlich). This law is one that brought along many of the standardized test that all different grades take today. There original goal in these tests were to give all students an equal chance at getting into college but instead they have brought down many student’s chances at getting into college with a test that is seen too highly by many. “Among those who have heard about the law, 34% say that the law has made schools better; 26% say it has made schools worse; and 32% say it has had no impact.” (Heimlich). These are the statistics that show how No Child Left Behind and standardized test have impacts several different schools. It is shown to us that there are different results all across the nation and that nothing major stands out about standardized testing. Although this test is supposed to be equal for all students, in the end it creates more problems and shows no overall positive results. This is something that is concerning and if it not completely beneficial towards all students, it should be
Students leave school stressed and full of anxiety and its actually making a negative effect on their everyday life. Students get so overwhelmed that harming themselves is in the picture. The state needs to realize that students aren’t giving their 100% and they will never know their actual academic skills. So why give standardized test? Teachers need to focus on the future and teaching them skills they need in their everyday life.
Since 2006, overall SAT scores have dropped by 21 points. It is safe to say that the increase in standardized testing has done more bad than good. When standardized testing became more prominent, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) saw a plateau in reading and math scores. Additionally, the NAEP saw no further closure in the test score gap. The test score gap affects all minorities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
These tests are a very poor measurement of educational quality. Standardized tests are very biased against people with a low socioeconomic status and students of color. They also discriminate against students with learning disabilities which causes them to receive lower scores than people who do not have these issues. Standardized tests are one of the ways a school districts is scored which makes the school district puts an abundance of stress and emphasis on achieving an exceptional score. This causes several of students and teachers to cheat on the tests so as to not get in trouble for doing poorly.
Standardized Tests: Right or Wrong? 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.
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.
In 2001 George W. Bush in started the no child left behind program. This program stated that children from grades three through twelve should be given a standardized test at the end of their course. The original purpose of these tests was to hold educators accountable for their teaching method. While the no child left behind program (NCLB) might have made teachers actually teach, there has been some bad effects to this program. Some of the bad effects of the program are the stress put on children, the inaccuracy of the standardized test and finally the tremendous cost of these tests.
Theoretically, standardized tests are designed to give everyone the same chance to get into a college or into a certain program at college, without outside factors like easier/harder tests being issued to different people. Practically, every school learns differently than each other. In one class, they might have covered something that will be on the test whereas another school has yet to cover that topic or just simply doesn’t cover it at all, whether due to limited time or due to the amount of relevance that it will have on in an individual’s life outside of school. No matter what strategy someone comes up with to even out the playing field and make schooling fair to everyone, there will always pros and cons to all of them. Tests like the
The No Child Left Behind act originally was to improve our student’s knowledge but had resulted differently in overly testing students . You’re tested about 14 or more times throughout your middle school and high school years depending on your school district requirements. The government is now willing to do whatever it takes to do to receive money for testing students. An example of how extreme this testing has become can be found in the situation of a student named Joe. He was hospitalized, preparing for open brain surgery, when he was rudely interrupted by his teacher’s visit, with a number two pencil and a standardized test.
Altogether, students are pressured to achieve better test scores than previously, creating an unneeded, ample amount of stress and
I strongly support the goal of No Child Left behind Act to help kids succeed. Under this policy, schools will be rewarded by performance on tests. Although, I would get a better system that monitors kids on their individual basis for the whole year. “Our kids and our schools shouldn’t have their whole futures riding on how well children can fill in little circles, to be scored by machines. ”(Harris, Harris and Smith 33-45) There are tons of people who do not perform well on tests.