Why Is Standardized Testing Bad

This is just plain stupid as a matter of policy” (Germain). This quote is important because it relates to students not learning well because of issues at home or medical reasons. To explain, it talks about children with disabilities or who are homeless or something along those lines aren’t going to learn as well as other students. If teachers have these students in their class then they aren’t going to get paid very much from them.

Teachers seem to be the most affected by the need for students to score well on their assessments. This is true due to our school system today which has forced many into a rigid teaching guideline that is meant to prepare students for their big test that will ultimately reflect upon themselves as well as the students. This problem distracts from the teacher’s wishes and wants for their students curriculum. This does not even mention the large class portions taken up by test prep and test taking tips that distract from meaningful learning, making for more problems than a test would solve. This just goes to show once more that standardized testing is not the way to go under our current

Alliance of Excellent Education took a survey from high school dropouts reported feeling “Alienated at school and that no one noticed if they failed to show up.” Students also complained that,“School did not reflect real-world challenges.” and said they felt “Classes were uninteresting and irrelevant.” So all high school dropouts are not just students not putting in the work because they do not feel like it, but because they feel school is not giving them anything they need or want. Connecting back to our nation, providing what the students want and educating them, if the number of dropouts were cut in half the government would receive as much as forty-five billion dollars in savings and additional revenue.

After students have taken the standardized tests, their scores are then averaged up and published and the different schools are then ranked from highest to lowest score. Because of this, teachers and professors end up teaching to the test due to the terror of losing their jobs. According to Scholastic.com, “it is unfair for schools to be compared because the test-takers are different sets of people, which cause a biased manipulation in statistics.” Educators neglect to teach students the appropriate skills that go beyond the classroom and tests, since they are now too caught up in preparing their students for these standardized tests. Educators are now using their time explaining the topics that will be a part of the tests, which leads them to forget to teach the students life lessons that go beyond the classroom walls.

The code is so strict that it gives no room for exceptions, which can ruin a student 's educational career if on a prime scale. In a survey of honor codes, 4 out of 7 did not have easy access to the honor code. In some cases It was hard to find on the homepage (Wade). If the schools expect the students to follow the honor code shouldn’t they have an easy access to it? Students should be able to view the honor code whenever they want to guarantee that they are not breaking any rules.

This test is stressful but worth the stress. Students use the duh and foul method to answer questions. It 's official that this test is preparing kids for college. Standardized test is important because is shows

The Main argument the author makes is that both teachers and parents are not taking action. The teachers seem to feel sorry for their students and end up passing them, instead of using tools of negative reinforcement such as failure to determine whether the student should graduate. The parents are not supporting the teachers and may end up doing the work for their kids. The one contradiction I see is on the tenth paragraph where she talks about the students she sees at night living a hard life of unemployment, chemical dependencies, abusive relationships

Also, students are not truly learning, since test companies do not give any feedback on how to do better and improve test scores. Another negative aspect of standardized tests is that they declare everything a student has learned and experienced over the years as a single number, the student’s score. The poor scorers would then lose self-esteem, while the well scorers are pressurized to keep scoring well, many of whom completely lose time for fun. Those well scorers might not even be as smart as they were thought to be.

This can happen because some teachers label their students and tell them to their face; or the student realizes it. The student then creates a self-fulfilling prophecy for themselves and lives up to it. This is a major reason why we see students not listening to teachers, skipping class, and getting into bad things. These deviant students are only being, and continuing to be deviant because their teacher always has that label on them. Lazy, unmotivated, behavior problem, slow learner are just some examples of what teachers label their students in the classroom.

So some kids will cheat to get on there. The pressure of school sometimes makes students do really bad things that will change their life forever. 64% of students have handed in work done by others and 72% of students work on assignments together. Also 53% of students have admitted to cheating on tests. Some of the things students do are cutting to get their mind off of things, and taking drugs.

Finally, standardized test are unfair to teachers, who are the ones teaching our children the “knowledge” they need to know as an adult. First up, standardized tests are very imprecise on the way they evaluate teachers and their way of teaching. According to a report by the Annenberg for School Reform, over 17% of teachers on Houston, Texas were ranked in the top category on the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills test, and yet they were ranked in the two lowest categories for Stanford Achievement Test(30). Next, this very disappointing because using the tests to reward and punish teachers causes them to cheat for their own benefit. This impacts our children 's education negatively.

In today’s society, especially junior and senior year of high school, everyone is too concerned with standardized testing and standardized testing scores. Professionals are question whether teachers are focused on teaching the subject or teaching the test. According to the article “Teach to the Test?,” Teachers are becoming restrictive to curriculums due to rather educators wanting students to “pass” the test. Teaching to the test can be both good and bad, it is good if curriculums are made correctly that allow students to learn what they are supposed to. Whereas, teaching the test can be equally as bad.

This does not only include Madera High staff, yet school staff should start to pay more attention to who they think may be in trouble because school is basically a student 's second home and spend most of their time there. This is why school teachers have a big role in this. Based on this survey students think that the staff is not really of much help when in reality they should feel that they can seek help in them because teachers have a sense of authority and if the students trusted in the staff to tell them what is going on they could do something to maybe halt or change the course of how the bully impacts the student and end the problem or even yet a little advice on the part of the staff on what would be the right thing to do never hurts. There was a situation at Madera High school

A test should not be a success indicator. I have learned that human behavior is unpredictable, so we cannot assume a number will determine a student 's success. Claude Steele (2012), Psychologist, pointed out that the SAT only measures about 18 percent of the things that it takes to do well in school. The SAT doesn’t effectively measure the elements which have been learned throughout high school; instead it seems to test how well of a test taker people are.

http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2012/states.html). This problem not only has to do with the lack of proper education but also the fact that most students will not pass due to our education system. High school does not prepare a student to take the SAT or ACT although it helps, it doesn’t meet the needs of the test. The test is designed to trick and confuse the student, not to accurate display the student’s ability to learn. Most of the SAT or ACT testing does not show how well a student performs in a class room setting but rather show how well a student can take the test.