The Importance Of Standardized Testing In Schools

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.

Standardized testing can quickly the only indicator of student and teacher accomplishment. The United States would be able to rabidly fix the testing problem with a simple touch-up of their education laws. " Despite ample evidence of the flaws, biases and inaccuracies of standardized exams, NCLB and related state and federal policies, such as Race to the Top (RTTT) and the NCLB waivers, have pressured schools to use tests to measure student learning, achievement gaps, and teacher and school quality, and to impose sanctions based on test scores" ("How Standardized Testing Damages Education" 1). The United States education system can be fixed by removing mandated testing. Laws such as NCLB, and RTTT should no longer exist.

Within these tests, they measures students skills and problem-solving ability. A feature on these tests is the multiple choice which is graded by machines. Therefore, it does not subject to human subjectivity or bias (“Standardized Tests” 1). These tests do not only prove to be a way to measure a student’s ability without bias, but a way to ensure teachers are meeting the standards and needs for the students. An issue surfaced when Kath M. Newman, an associate professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, stated that she was angry at her son about a test.

Since 2014, the racial diversity in United States public schools has been at an all time high, with students of color outnumbering their white peers. Although minority populations enrolled in public schools has increased, resulting in the acceleration of graduation rates for historically disadvantaged groups like African-Americans and Latinos, school systems continue to fail to foster the academic success of Native Americans and properly encourage them to obtain their high school diplomas. The graduation rates of Native Americans exemplify this inadequacy of the school system, as graduation rates have been on a downward trend since 2008, according the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center (Maxwell). In the seven states with the highest

Steve Revington, awarded The Prime Minister's Award of Teaching

Standardized tests are also utilized by physicians, lawyers, and pilots in order to measure their knowledge of their profession; the use of these tests is widespread among students, educators, and professional. If the results of these tests were unreliable, then they wouldn’t be used in such a wide array of professions and educational

According to Herbert J. Walberg, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, “Standardized tests fairly and comprehensively measure student performance, thus directly benefiting students while holding teachers accountable. Students who study for a standardized test are more likely to complete their homework and watch less television than their peers”(Walberg). According to Herbert J. Walberg, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, “Thus, standardized test-taking develops habits that help students not only with the test but throughout life. While some teachers oppose standardized tests, most of their objections can be overcome through better test design and professional development

Motivation for such activities is largely due to the consequences schools and individual districts experience when the criterion is not met. According to No Child Left Behind, an act that requires annual testing to ensure that schools stay efficient and students all have the same chance for success, “if a school failed to meet federal benchmarks of progress, it could be sanctioned, reorganized, or closed” (Edwards 3). While the act sounds productive,

The American school system is dependent on grades. However, has one ever stopped to question why? Peter Airasian, a measurement expert, explains that educators use grades primarily for administrative purposes and to give students feedback about their progress and achievement. Yet such a system directly contradicts the intended purpose and instead fosters an environment of compliance and shortcuts. Students become so concerned with achieving the highest possible grade they disregard learning and resort to alternative methods of obtaining it.

Activity#1: The Pros and Cons of Testing from Two Perspectives Standardized testing is advantageous in many ways. One of the most important benefits is that standardized testing holds teachers and schools responsible for teaching students what they should know, since the student’s achievements in these tests become public record and schools and teachers can come under scrutiny if the scores indicated that they aren’t up to the par. It also guides teachers and helps them determine what to teach and pinpoint and determine the gaps where the student needs to invest more time and effort in order to fill it.

In my opinion, public educational curriculums and accountability guidelines should be established at the state and local levels where parents/guardians play an integral role in the decision making process. I do not believe standardized tests alone are an accurate measure of a student’s knowledge; their classwork, projects, and literary works also represent a student’s talent and capabilities. In agreement with Robert Schaeffer, a representative for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, that federal mandated programs such as the No Child Left Behind and The Race to The Top high-stakes tests foster the temptation to cheat because they serve as means to both punish and reward students, teachers, and principals based solely upon test scores (Schaeffer,

As a result, we had in 2011 nearly half (48.1%) of all Dane County’s Black third graders failed to meet proficiency standards in reading, compared to 10.9% of White third graders. In other words, Dane County Black third graders were 4.4 times more likely NOT to be proficient in reading than their White peers. In other words, because of this large difference between rich and poor property taxes payment, rich communities receive more school funding and give great opportunities to their children to have higher quality education than poor communities. In “School funding inequality makes education separate and unequal”, Klein Rebecca (2015)

There are visual learners, auditory learners, and tactile learners and test prep is not a hands-on activity. Auditory and visual learners can work to understand the high stakes tests content, but tactile learners are out of luck. Standardized tests, like the ACT, traditionally only measure core classes content, not welding or auto and mechanics classes. Since the ACT is what colleges look at for admissions it would make sense to test students who want to go to vocational school in those content areas. A vocational test is where the tactile learners would thrive.

Standardize testing has come under a great deal of scrutiny with regarding to correctness and fairness but are still widely used today. The United States have been the most criticized nation as it pertain to the school system. However, several programs sprouted out of the dirt such as physical fitness, core programs and programs for the gifted and not very gifted. The government added the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) which is designed to help less fortunate students improve their education

No, the purpose of improving college admissions is twofold: to give less weight to a broken system that doesn’t accurately assess students’ abilities, and also to find top-notch students regardless of their test scores - particularly among the demographics that are put at the biggest disadvantage in standardized tests. Shifting the focus away from test scores helps level the playing field for lower-income and minority students by forcing colleges to look at less biased factors. As Geiser et al. argue (2007), standardized test scores correlate strongly with income level, whereas GPAs do not; thus, GPA is a far more equitable approach toward measuring success.