When a teacher announces that there is an upcoming test, sighs and complaining will fill the room. But are standardized tests all that bad? Standardized tests are a simple and fast way to evaluate whether students understand what is required of them to learn. Many people have started to protest standardized testing because of the effect it has on students. Standardized tests should continue because they help teachers improve their teaching, allow students’ progress to be tracked over time, and they hold schools accountable for student’s learning. One reason standardized testing should continue in schools is because they help teachers improve their teaching. Many educators have noticed that “the clear information gleaned from these universal …show more content…
In the article, “Should schools continue standardized testing?” it states, “They suggest that students benefit from participating in standardized testing because it allows their progress to be tracked over time. That way, teachers and parents can easily track student improvement.” Many parents and teachers like the aspect of seeing students’ improvement in different areas. Teachers can also look at the data and see how they can personally help a student and alter their teaching. Standardized tests provide a great measurement of progress for students and without them, that data would be harder to obtain. Standardized tests hold schools accountable for students’ learning. Churchill claims, “Standardized exam data remains the best way to hold schools accountable for their academic performance.” These tests provide a gauge for parents and administrators to see how the students in each class are doing. Standardized tests evaluate what students have learned from what is required. The American University writes, “Standardized testing requirements are designed to hold teachers, students, and schools accountable for academic achievement and to incentivize
Proponents see standardized testing as a way of making testing more efficient and effective by minimizing cost and increasing people’s accountability for their performance in the system. Opponents on the other hand argue that the systems has limitations based on its very nature on what can be tested and as a result of these standards needing to be met sacrifice some very important aspects of students education experience as well as force onto students and teachers a one size fits all model that has failed to deliver on its promises. After having reviewed all the evidence in detail it becomes clear to me that standardized testing is not an effective system for educating students and does more bad than good
In fact, the increasing use of standardized testing will do more damage than good, because of its failure to capture the entirety of a student’s body of work. Furthermore, the overwhelming stress that the United States government, and school systems have placed on the usage of standardized tests has become detrimental to American education, and is not the most effective way to gauge the intelligence of American students. The American educational system should be fixated on providing each child enough attention and information so they can succeed in that class and in the future. However, the increasing focus on having to pass a standardized test has blinded schools of the real goal, because they are required to get their students to pass the standardized tests.
Although standardized testing has its cons, it also has pros. For example, Two important things Standardized testing provides is the ability to see students weak areas and progress. Although having the ability to see students weak areas may sound like a good thing, it really isn’t. The ability to see weak areas is moreso a benefit to educators when teaching students so they know what to help students with and fix so students can improve in these areas. But, teachers don’t really help students one on one rather as one big group of up to 30+ students at times.
The blank walls of the classroom seemed to shine as face after face marveled in their test scores, remembering the things they thought they didn’t know how to do. In the article, “ What are the pros and cons of standardized testing,” by Spark Admissions, the evidence shows Standardized tests should be used in schools. Standardized tests are fair, prepare students for jobs and college, and create a student guideline of progress over the years and where they should be in the future. Standardized testing is a fair way of measuring students' academic abilities.
Introduction Attention Grabber: If you are not good at taking tests, does it mean that you are not going to be successful? The test is just a number who can be alternated whether you cheap it or not and how focused you were when taking it. As students, teachers, and parents, we are all familiar with the concept of standardized testing. However, have you ever stopped to consider whether or not these tests are actually necessary or beneficial? Today, I want to discuss why I believe standardized testing should be eliminated in our education system.
Although some might say standardized tests are useful metrics for teacher evaluations, the teachers can not make students do well on a test. Standardized testing has a stigma that if one does not do well on the tests then their future will be at stake and they will probably not do well in life. This is simply not true, taking one moment, one day, one hour of someone's life and making them take a test will not show you how well a student will do in the future. The tests
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
Certainly, some people say that standardized testing is the only way to determine growth and achievement within students. But, these tests don’t usually provide an entire measure of educational attainment. They don’t give attributes such as a sense of wonder, leadership, compassion, curiosity, and critical thinking. Daniel Koretz, a psychometrician stated, “…tests can measure only a portion of the goals of education, which are necessarily broader and more inclusive than the test could possibly be”(humbleisd.net). Standardized tests can at best only measure if a student is good at their core classes.
Standardized testing brings an added stress on students to score high. If students do not score high on standardized tests it lowers their self esteem. Teachers have to spend plenty of time telling their students how to take a test and not teaching them material that they need to learn for the class. When they are being taught how to take the test they could be learning more information about material in the class. Some people say that standardized testing can
People argue that standardized testing detracts from genuine learning and that the emphasis on test scores results in an overly narrow focus on math and reading, neglecting other crucial areas of education, such as social studies, science, and the arts. While it is true that some educators may prioritize teaching according to the test, this is not a flaw inherent in standardized testing but rather a failure of teaching practices. The use of standardized testing does not inherently prevent teachers from providing a well-rounded education that incorporates multiple subjects and fosters critical thinking and creativity, but rather, it is up to teachers to create a balance between test preparation and other broader learning objectives. Moreover, standardized testing provides an objective measure of student achievement and can identify areas where students need additional support. The data provided by these tests can inform instructional decisions and help teachers target their instruction to address areas where students struggle.
Introduction 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. Thesis Statement Standardized tests should not be eliminated completely, but should rather be evaluated in addition to other factors such as grades, extracurricular activities, and volunteer hours. This would take pressure off of students during standardized tests, allow colleges to see how well-rounded the students are, and give students who are better in other areas
“We’ve asked test scores to carry ever more weight” (Harris 3). With the No Child Left Behind Act coming into play through 2015, now called The Every Student Succeeds Act, standardized testing became the center of students' lives. From the time they were in elementary school taking those exams, to high school, where these tests can determine their future, students never catch a break. Everybody tests differently, not everyone deals well under the pressure of a timed exam, creating unreliable data. “Standardized tests inadvertently create incentives for students to become superficial thinkers” (Harris 3).
Throughout the past few years there has been an important debate amongst students and teachers as to whether or not standardized testing should take place within the system. Standardized testing in school started under President Bush in 1965 and was originally designed to create tests in order to gauge how students are doing in school, and how well teachers are teaching subjects with little to no success. Standardized tests have since gone through some changes which widened the range of what the tests covered and created several state regulated tests such as the SAT, however the same principles of standardized testing still stand within school systems in the US today. Standardized testing does not belong in the school system because it gives
A standardized test is a test which is given and scored in a “standard” manner. These tests have been displayed through the many years of the ACT, SAT, ELA, and Advanced Placement examinations. But there is a controversial conversation out in the public, do they have a significant impact on education in America? How will teachers and colleges continue the ability to evaluate students if standardized tests are slowly disappearing? Opponents argue over how these assessments are a great way to identify needed areas of improvement.
For a very long time, schools have been using standardized testing to measure the progress of students inside the classroom. This is a simple way for schools to understand the quality of the teaching and learning going on. However, standardized tests tend to be inaccurate due to how little information they can actually gather about a student. The tests don't even take into account the teaching style that the teacher used or how the student learns because the tests are all the same to make it "fair". While fairness plays a big role when it comes to education, the way that standardized testing makes things fair can actually negatively affect a student's test score.