Should Standardized Testing Be Required By Law?

Would you like to take a test that is unfair, expensive, and unreliable? Chances are you already have. Standardized testing in schools is not only bad for the students, but also bad for our country’s future. Some might think standardized testing is a good thing, because it is the only way to measure all students the same across the country. However, this thought is wrong for many reasons.

First, standardized testing helps us to see growth of students. We can see growth as compared to other students and other countries. Students take the test more than once and it’s different every time. Growth can be seen from these tests throughout the year telling teachers what to teach.

Standardized testing has become a controversial topic in recent years, parents, students, teachers, principals and almost anyone who has a relationship with education is affected by this topic. People are either for or against standardized testing, some believe it is the only fair way to compare students others believe that the tests are too greatly stressed in school and are a nuisance to education. Standardized tests are stressed greatly, students learn testing material all year not focusing on anything else deemed unimportant by the test makers. Every student has the same amount of time and question on tests; they also are tested on the same subjects which the test makers believe are most important for children to learn. Standardized tests are used for many things such as ranking students on a national basis and government funding for schools.

Although standardized testing has been a major part of schooling it has also had a negative impact on effective education. Standardized has made a huge impact on public schooling so much that not only does it affect the students but also the teachers. With the teachers now beginning to get raises or having their jobs on the line if their students fail the test, many students have not been getting the fullest education process that they could get. Students may not realize the impact that it has had on the type of teaching style that they receive because they are so used to it. With so many teachers not having a lot of time to teach what is on the test and the other things that they feel are important to students to know, a lot of

Standardized test cause reduced content knowledge. In other words, teach the test criteria and nothing more. The scores that everyone is trying to get only give a person a small amount of the knowledge that, without the test, they would obtain. Theses scores are drilled so hard into a student’s head that they do not know any other thing to do than to pass that test. Barber states in his article that there were three groups of people, elected officials from the school board, the press, and the public. He said that “All three groups were clamoring for something simple and repeatable to use to judge how well their schools were doing.” He goes on to say that they thought standardized testing was just that. They wanted to compare other schools to their school, that it gives them those bragging rights. This will eventually create a ripple effect, and come back on the schools in harmful ways.

Schools all over the nation have introduced standardized testing as a way to evaluate what the students have learned over the course of the school year. Exams can be administered online or on paper, depending on the subject. Test can be taken at different points of the school year; results can be used as a way to determine what areas are weaker than others. Most results are viewed by the school board, administrators, and teachers. In some schools students take one end of the year test with different subjects, other just takes one test. These tests can be graded by groups of people are computers. Standardized testing has become a part of America’s educational system and many don’t see the benefit of the test at all.

Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance. This is because students go by a certain curriculum in school, but the wording on the tests

Some would argue that standardized tests test everybody on the same level and it shows how well the students are taught by the teachers. This is true but not everybody learns on the same level and some don’t take tests very well.

Another theme presented in multiple articles was a rise in cheating. Source number one, “Do Standardized Tests Show an Accurate View of Students’ Abilities”, believes that because the push to do well on standardized tests is such a priority, “some institutions consider cheating” (Concordia University). Source number two, “Is the Use of Standardized Test Improving Education in America,” disagrees, explaining that cheating by administrators and students is not an issue, and not a reason to terminate standardized testing. This source also clarifies that “[i]t is likely that some cheating occurs, but some people cheat on their tax returns also, and the solution is not to abolish taxation” (Standardized Tests - ProCon.org). Source number three, “Test Our Children Well”, proposes a solution that by using the “testing effect”, “teachers could develop new tests questions each week for each class…” (Emanuel 10) and by doing so, will eliminate the opportunity for student to cheat on exams.

Why more standardized test won’t improve education. Having to focus more on passing a grade than the education learning is not going to help on improving education. “Test scores are used to bar students from moving one grade to another, to determine teacher and administrator pay, and to label schools as failing, a step that often leads to closure” (“Why” 1). Standardized tests seem

High school students have to take a standardized test to graduate. This requirement should be reclassified. Students shouldn't need to pressure over something that shouldn't even be mandatory and is irrelevant to graduating. Some people agree standardized tests should be a requirement for high school graduation, whereas others think standardized tests shouldn't be a requirement for high school graduation. Many things can go wrong with standardized tests. For example, students who have trouble with English might fail. Hence, preventing them from graduating. Additionally, since it's a standardized test, all schools tests correspond to one another and are exactly the same. Therefore, if students didn't learn about a certain topic, which was on the tests, they're gonna fail due to something that's not their fault, at all. Students who have flunked the test, have to attend summer school or get held back and are not allowed to graduate! It's not fair because just for a test that might not even show what you truly know, will cost you a grade. Consequently, high school students shouldn't be required to take a standardized test to graduate.

Standardized testing creates a lot of stress on students and educators alike. Because of how much stress is put on them to prepare students for these tests, many excellent teachers quit their jobs everyday. In fact, in April, new federal data stated that 17 percent of new public school teachers leave their profession after four years due to stress and other reasons. Some teachers fail to teach students skills that go beyond the tests because they’re so pressured to get their students ready for these exams. This amount of stress can lead to feelings of negativity towards school and learning in general as well as cause negative health issues. Standardized tests places a large amount of stress on both teachers and students.

Standardized testing is not an effective way to test the skills and abilities of today’s students. Standardized tests do not reveal what a student actually understands and learns, but instead only prove how well a student can do on a generic test. Schools have an obligation to prepare students for life, and with the power standardized tests have today, students are being cheated out of a proper, valuable education and forced to prepare and improve their test skills. Too much time, energy, and pressure to succeed are being devoted to standardized tests. Standardized testing, as it is being used presently, is a flawed way of testing the skills of today’s students.

Standardized tests do not asses skills when their questions are generalized for an entire population. Most of the time, the tests are not in conjunction with classroom skills and behavior. These tests asses for general knowledge and understanding of students rather that their actual abilities. Since the questions are general in nature, it becomes very difficult for teachers to know how to improve the students understanding of a particular subject based on just general information. This leads to teachers “teaching to test” rather than educating students in a proper way based on the real needs of the classroom. Another reason these tests do more bad than good is the fact that teachers actually have a test booklet instructing them on what to do if a student vomits during a test. Students study so hard for these tests and simply cannot handle the pressure. So in the end, their final scores reflect not their abilities, but the influences of their surrounding factors instead.

Standardized Testing has been around for many decades in the United States. In 2001 George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act was used as a teacher evaluation tool and not a student evaluation tool. It was a misconceived belief that teachers were giving easier tests to show higher grades for their students it was also believed that the same teachers were bumping grades to make themselves look better and more effective (Introduction: No Child Left Behind. 2005). The push for standardized testing came from Universities and Colleges because they were using Secondary Education grades as part of their admission process and they were discovering that some students were coming in with a less than proficient skill set that did not match up to the grades that showed on