Pros And Cons Of 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.

Standardized tests may be used for a wide variety of educational purposes. For example, they may be used to determine a young child’s readiness for kindergarten, identify students who need special-education services or specialized academic support, place students in different academic programs or course levels, or award diplomas and other educational certificates.

Carnoy, Loeb, and Smith (2003) found a weakness in the relationships between TAKS scores and other outcomes such as high school graduation rates and scores on college entrance exams. Other researchers (Klein, Hamilton, McCaffrey, & Steecher, 2000) analyzed increases in scores in Texas on the NAEP, increases that they state political leaders attributed to the accountability system, and found that Texas score improvements in mathematics at grade 8 are not significantly different from those of other states that did not have strong accountability systems in place. In fact their data show evidence that the achievement gap between white students and underrepresented minorities actually increased. Some argue that the data show that the accountability program actually negatively impacts schools that were already academically behind before the implementation of the accountability system (Fassold,

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,

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

At some point in your academic career I am sure you have heard the statement that minority groups score less on standardized tests than other groups. This statement, however, makes a broad generalization that they do worse strictly because of the color of their skin. There is no evidence to prove that minority groups do worse on standardized testing just because they are a minority. When minorities do worse, there are many factors that go into it.

Standardized tests are bringing down the education system in America. America’s ranking for education in the world down by about 15 notches. Big tests like these don’t leave a lot of room for learning about other subjects that are just as important as the ones on the test. Standardized tests are not able to measure all the aspects of what is being taught at school across the nation. In theory these tests are a perfect way to boost the education system but in reality it causes a lot of problems and hasn’t helped all that

It would be nice to imagine that everyone begins at the start line together. Unfortunately, a majority of people start at a disadvantage. In most public elementary schools, there are students in every grade level that are reading behind grade level. Consequently, these same students will encounter tests throughout their whole academic career. Starting in elementary school, a literacy gap will begin to emerge among students. As this gap grows, standardized testing will remain or increase to a point where some students are so far behind that it becomes intimidating to be in an academic setting. While many factors can contribute to the literacy gap, there are companies and corporations that continue to profit off of distributing

No one ever said school was easy. It takes quite a bit of hard work and preparation from both the students and teachers. All within a school year there are different homework, assignments, projects, tests, quizzes, presentations and much more to try and fit into an already busy course schedule. To add to that the Education Reform Law of 1993 was introduced to schools, which required that all public school students have to be tested in the subjects of English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science and Technology Engineering. Those set of tests are called Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) and they are meant to measure students performance based on the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework. Due to Massachusetts requiring all sophomore and some ninth grade students to take the MCAS, students are only

1,2: For my issue, I plan on addressing the controversy of standardized testing. I believe there would be differing opinions in the audience, some supporting and disagreeing with the topic. Most, if not all students have taken some form of standardized testing, thus, establishing a wide variety of viewpoints. While some believe this form of testing accurately measures a student’s achievement, others think it is an unreliable measure of a student’s performance.

For many years, there has been a great deal of controversies on whether standardized tests should be used for college admissions. Standardized testing started in America over 50 years ago and are today, more pressure-packed and ubiquitous than ever before. The first standardized test was developed in 1959 by Professor Everett Franklin Lindquist. Many admissions counselors depend on a student’s ACT and SAT scores a great deal when determining if they should accept the student or not. Though many feel that these tests are a good thing and should continue to be used, others disagree due to the numerous problems that have been discovered when reviewing students SAT and ACT scores. Many feel that the tests are unfair and this is why standardized

Do you ever just wonder why people are failing in school and what 's the setting behind them in failing is? The achievement gap in test scores affect many different groups and is the reason behind them failing. An achievement gap is often defined as the differences between the test scores of minority and/or low-income students and the test scores of their White and Asian peers (Dee and Penner). This means that the achievement gap is the academic difference between minority and white students, essentially stating that minorities get left behind.This is one of the biggest issues within our education system. Based on the article from Atlantic, “History Class and the Fictions About Race in

1. Standardized tests are a reliable and objective way to measure student achievement. Multiple choice tests like the ACT and SAT are graded by machines and not subject to bias or subjectivity. Having to rely on scores from teachers is not as reliable as the teachers have a vested interest in producing favorable results.

Jane L. David and Larry Cuban do a great job of informing the reader of issues involving closing the achievement gap in education in their book, “Cutting Through the Hype”. David and Cuban, friends and colleagues for forty-five years, collaborated yet again to revise “Cutting Through the Hype” to re-address the “far more pronounced” effects of the federal role and the philanthropic foundations in funding and setting the policy agenda for reforming U.S. schools. Chapter three, Closing the Achievement Gap, begins with a realistic scenario of a fifth grade classroom of thirty students that range from six non English speaking students, limited English speaking students, and fluent English speaking, high performing students. The

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.