The use of standardized testing to measure students’ knowledge is an inaccurate reflection of their capabilities. By being forced to take a test that does not effectively show their abilities, students become overstressed, and the tests themselves do not promote true academic achievement. Rather than learning about subjects in order to gain knowledge, students simply memorize facts and formulas to get a decent test score. Standardized tests are not an appropriate measure of student performance, only benefit certain groups of students, and do not prepare students for the real world. 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 …show more content…
For example, students in English class at Ledford read books such as Animal Farm, and The Crucible, in addition to many others that are written in a fairly modern style. However, on the state tests the students take, most articles on the English portion are written in an older style of English, and that makes it harder for students to understand what they are reading. Standardized tests should align with the school’s curriculum to show students’ knowledge since that is what they are learning throughout the year. Also, not all students are great test takers. Four out of ten students have test anxiety and ‘freeze’ or ‘blank out’ when they are taking their tests and end up doing poorly (Source E). Many students have good grades and are intelligent but the test anxiety takes over and they do not do well on state tests. “A 2001 study published by the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-over-year test score improvements were temporary and caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning..." (Source B). Standardized tests measure a student’s understanding on a certain subject. For example, the ACT …show more content…
Many teachers these days are “teaching to the test” and hurting their students in the process. The students are not properly taught to retain information that will be helpful in the future. Many students are taught to memorize the information for the test and to never look back on that information until an exam, where the whole memorizing process starts again. The information is never fully learned or understood. “ students ... have very little idea how they can apply the information throughout their lives” (Source F). Many students cannot remember what they have learned up to the current week, and many researchers have found that since the information is not currently being used, it has been pushed to the back of the mind and in most cases, forgotten. Researchers have found that many students forget up to 60% of material that they learned in high school before moving to a university. The information that has been consumed by students is not being applied in real life situations. And the tests will not help students in the future with getting jobs or any real-world knowledge. “Instead of being able to explain what they can DO with the information they have learned (i.e., order food at a restaurant from language class, determine appropriate change while shopping from math class), students often only cite the technical
Standardized testing has been ruling over the lives of students, making or breaking them in their education without fair judgement. Tests like the SAT and the ACT count for way too much when applying to colleges, which in turn limits the student 's capabilities to thrive in an environment that would benefit them. There are many problems within a standardized test that deems them to be unreliable as a true test of knowledge. Although designed to test groups of students on intelligence, standardized testing neglects to fairly acknowledge the abilities of each unique student which reflect their true capabilities.
Standardized tests do not even perform their job as well as they are supposed to. The reason why we have
When comes to education in America, far to offer our society labels people as un- educated because the inability to pass standardized tests. In reality, we shouldn’t base a person's ability to determine if they're educated because that’s far from the truth. I believe that standardized test isn’t the only way to determine every student’s education knowledge. For example, high scores standardized test doesn’t signify that you are talented thinking or a student. The goal of education is more education, but the majority of people like this don’t get the opportunity like others. Just think they could have been people who made good grades and excelled in school, but didn’t get a full ride scholarship to a certain college. There are people who didn’t go to college, but are successful today. It doesn’t happen, for the majority of us, but we can’t just single out those people who have originated up with creativity, intelligence with ideas or investment with no college background.
Ron Alweiss 12/5/17 Mrs. Smithers 8-1 Standardized Tests For The Win Imagine there was another way, besides a report card, to prove someone’s intelligence! Standardized testing is a respected way of showing someone’s smarts and abilities in terms of English and math. Standardized testing has a positive impact on students because it’s a good way to see the knowledge of different kids that go to different schools, it shows you the format and what kind of questions will be on the test, so you’ll be ready for harder exams like the SAT, ACT, etc, and it can push their minds to their full potential.
Standardized tests are unreliable in many ways. Poor and minority students, for instance, often score
Are there too many standardized tests? Standardized tests are testing that students take so that teachers and the state know what level students are performing at. Standardized tests are taken across the nation. I think student don't take too many standardized tests because of standardized test help with many things. They help show what teachers need to t4each students, the test shows student's progress and how they are growing, and the Federal government is working on making standardized testing run easily without having too many errors.
There are many articles on how standardized tests do not accurately measure the quality of a student’s education. The majority of them summarize the pressure put of teachers to teach standardized tests, rather than to teach material that would correlate with and help students to understand the material on standardized tests.
In the past several years, standardized testing has been increasingly used as the most meaningful method for evaluating students but is it accurate indicator of student performance? Standardized testing can be described as the use of tests that are managed, scored, and understood in a predetermined, standard way. There are two main kinds of standardized tests that are widely used in schools i.e. standardized aptitude and standardized achievement tests. The aptitude tests are used to provide predictions regarding the performance of a test taker in a successive setting. On the contrary, the achievement tests are designed to predict the effective acquisition of knowledge and certain skills by a test taker. While students' score on aptitude tests are sometimes used in a school evaluation system, the most typical ones that determine a school's success are achievement tests. One of the major concerns of the use of standardized testing is whether the practice can be so prevalent yet so mistaken or inappropriate. Standardized testing is inaccurate because it lacks reliability, fairness, and objectivity, its expensive, highly demanding, and instructionally insensitive despite contrary opinions.
Standardized tests determine such a drastic amount of one’s future. Not only do students fail standardized tests, but they also lack the knowledge that one expects a child to learn in their current grade. In general, teachers focus on preparing students for tests and not truly teaching the material. This forces the question of whether or not standardized tests measure what students have learned or their test taking skills. Many students have terrible test taking skills, which results in substantially low scores. This does not result from lack of knowledge of the material, but rather because they do not understand how to effectively take and finish tests. Students deserve a proper education, therefore require a reliable educator. The majority of these failures result in lower graduation rates, and the percent of workforce drastically drops. Standardized tests such as the American College Test, the ACT, Scholastic Aptitude Test, the SAT, and core state tests should not remain a deciding factor for passing a grade level or getting accepted into a certain college. One reason includes students’ inability to afford needed test preparation. Misevaluating students’ knowledge and skills when using structured tests continues to exemplify the major flaws in today’s education system. Therefore, standardized testing should not exist.
Ever since then standardized testing has been a huge part of education. Teachers across the nation had to teach to the curriculum instead of what they thought the students needed to learn. Nowadays colleges strictly look at ACT and SAT scores rather than classroom grades, because they believe that some teachers grade on a curve and are not giving the students a fair chance. Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance. A 2001 study published by the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-over-year tests core improvements were temporary and “caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning…”(“Standardized Tests”). Teachers are stressed over if they are teaching “correctly”. They went to a 4-year college, some even more, to get a degree in something that they wanted to do, either for themselves or for the children, and now they have to “teach to the test”. Tests can only measure a portion of the goals of education. A pschometrician, Daniel Koretz says, “standardized tests usually do not provide a direct and complete measure of educational achievement.”(Harris, Harris, and Smith).
In my opinion I do not think standardized tests measures a student's learning accurately. I think this because there are students who are bright, smart, and have a high GPA, but when it comes to taking a test some students just break
Standardized tests are a reliable measure of student improvement and achievement. According to procon.org “Without them, policy makers would have to rely on tests scored by individual
Most schools are rated by how their students perform on standardized tests, so in order to receive an excellent score they make sure to prepare their students. Teachers are then pressured to only focus on material that will appear on the test.Under those circumstances, students’ curriculum will get narrowed. Study shows schools may drop whole classes like History and Science if they aren’t being taught, especially in low-income schools because parents can’t afford to pay the extra money to keep those subjects for their children(“The Dangerous Consequences of”). This is unhealthy because critical topics and skills are not being taught to students, as they can not be tested with paper and pencil. Instead of learning and comprehending the material, students are taught with repetition of simple skills and tested on that material a few days later. This allows students to memorize for the test and forget the material a week later, rather than actually learning the material and applying it later in life. Equally, teachers are hurt by this process because if they want to receive a good grade, they will most likely teach to the test rather than their students. This takes the fun out of teaching for some teachers because they no longer have control over what they teach. In the long run, teaching to the test has a negative effect on students and
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 test do not achieve their goal of proving a students intelligence. Students are passionate about different subjects.When a student is able to comprehend more thoroughly then another he or she is able excel easily. There are many studies that indicate there is a correlation between students ability to excel at a subject if they are more passionate . For example, in “Standardized Testing Does Not Determine Intelligence”, the author states “ Test are supposed to determine intelligence, but simply only knowing the core subjects would not make one intelligent” (Morford, Odyssey.) It is commonly known that test like STARR, Texas Standardized Test, only test on core subjects like Math, Science, History and English. If a student understands and has