Imagine working hard all year long maintaining excellent grades and then boom you bomb a standardized test. Could it be that you didn’t retain any of the information that you were taught all year long or is it because you are just horrible at taking a test. Either way, it is very difficult and unfair for the State of Texas to base everything on one test. How can one test determine what you have learned all year? This is the question that many parents’ year after year ask themselves after receiving their children’s test results. Year in and year out students and educators are put under so much unneeded pressure to perform well on the Standardize test. The students stress themselves out because of what these test score determine. For some
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.
Standardized testing not only stresses out students, but it also leads the teachers to go in a dilemma whether to focus on the curriculum or to get students ready for the standardized testing. No one has ever enjoyed taking a test in his or her entire educational history. Similarly Mr. Estrada’s 4th grade class was not every excited about taking standardized test. Each student has his or her own level of learning. As the students were taking the test, I noticed some students were panicking, while others were confused.
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.
Leslie Rayburn is a teacher in Santa Cruz, California, and she, too, believes that this is unfair to students, and to teachers who are graded based on their students’ grades. She explains that, ‘the children who perform poorly on multiple choice standardized tests (but perhaps might perform well on an open-ended form of test) are labeled as “less intelligent’ and the school suffers” (Rayburn) Since progress of a student is mainly viewed based upon the outcome of standardized test scores, the lower-performing students are seen as “not college- ready”, which creates a roadblock to a student about where they may want to attend college. The fact of the matter is that no two students are the same, learn the same, or test the same, so standardized tests are inaccurate measurements of a student’s full learning capability and
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.
For some, standardized tests become more than just the average little road block they are meant to be, they can become the wreck that changes one’s life. Standardized tests began all the way back in the 1800’s with the use heightening when the No Child Left Behind Act went into place in 2001, then mandating that all 50 states had to
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
They claimed to have measured a student’s success and progress, but the results were quite inaccurate. Unless students had taken the same test at the beginning of the year, then how could a single test result determine whether students improved? Regardless, student success should be measured by the educator and overall improvement and not by a single, inaccurate result. As a solution, standardized testing should be eliminated from US public schools regarding the evidence that they were a major stress creator, the test does not affect the participant or instructor, and the results were an inaccurate measurement of student success.
standardized testing is a very common way of determining a student 's past academic achievement and future potential. however, high-stakes tests can cause anxiety. when teachers or schools are rewarded for better performance on tests, then those rewards encourage teachers to "teach to the test" instead of providing a rich and broad curriculum. as a result, standardized testing has become controversial in the united states.
The Standardized test, similar to the STAAR, can be a nightmare for some students. It should not be allowed in Texas due to many reasons such as wasting precious education time, not promoting students to the next grade, causing stress, provoking students to take drugs, and not determining students’ full potential. Standardized tests should not continue because they provide inaccurate feedback about students and destroy their confidence for their future education and life. Although the standardized test shows if the student should get promoted or not, the test lacks showing the full potential of some students because it judges a student based on a few skills. For example, if a student is good in classwork but is a bad test taker,
not only is standardized testing stressful for students;it also doesnt measure a students performance and does not improve student achievment. Standardized testing doesnt show what a student actually knows. Some teachers have even said some questions on the test,they havent even covered in class. So,can you imagine how stressful for the student is. Testing on something they havent learned?
Since elementary school, standardized tests have impacted my life negatively. In second grade, I took a standardized test to determine what pace I was moving at in mathematics and English. In both subjects, I was one point away from being in the Duke Tip honors program.. After second grade, the tests were more tedious. They took longer because the problems were harder.
Year after year, students all across the country from five to eighteen years old are burdened with the stress-inducing task of taking standardized tests. Hours upon hours of valuable time is spent measuring intelligence and knowledge, when having instruction time instead could be far more beneficial. Students aren’t the only ones being affected by the tests that can cause deep anxiety in many, teachers also are succumbed to the stressful testing sessions and preparations. The many tests forced upon students across the nation are irrelevant to the actual improvement that is occurring among these students. The use of standardized testing among pupils in America is not improving education, but is heavily damaging it instead.
Dear Texas Association of School Administrators, I am writing to this board to draw your attention to some of the problems and that come with high-stakes standardized tests like the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR). I believe that standardized tests should not have such a huge role in your education for three reasons. First of all, the STAAR puts pressure on the teachers to “teach to the test” by only teaching what is necessary for one 8th grade standardized test, instead of what information will be necessary for higher levels of education Next, as standardized tests become more and more important, skills and qualities like critical thinking, creativity, and leadership are becoming less valued than test taking. Finally,