The Pros And Cons Of Standardized Testing

Throughout high school and college we will go through a vast amount of testing but why? Testing is used to show a person’s amount of knowledge on a particular subject. Usually it’s for one specific subject and not a majority of them, the standardized tests include all testable subjects as in English, math, science, writing, and reading. However, before we can all begin our college careers we have to take one of two tests, the ACT or the SAT. These two tests determine the college you get into, the amount of scholarships you will receive, and even whether or not your will be accepted into any college.

     These tests use reasoning, analysis, problem solving, and what your previous knowledge of the subject is. It measures the kinds of tasks that college students are expected to learn (http://www.act.org, 2004).

When people think of the education system, most can say that there are some problems, though they might not be able to pinpoint what needs to change first. If you ask most teachers, they will say that the first thing that needs to be changed in the schooling system to help the students more is the standardized testing. They will say that while it can be helpful it has a lot of faults and needs to be updated or changed to help its students. Standardized testing has often been a topic for discussion, between parents and people in the schooling system. It seems that a lot of people either hate standardized testing for not giving every child a chance to succeed, or love it for being a fair way to test whether a child knows what they need to know at their age. There have been many articles, books, and documentary’s debating on whether or not standardized testing is doing more harm then good. There was a comic made that shows the brutality and bluntness of what standardized testing is really like. Standardized Testing causes too much stress by putting unfair expectations on teens and doesn’t give every single student the chance to succeed.

Each year high school students from around the country take the SAT or ACT. The ACT and SAT are both standardized test used by colleges to determine the knowledge of a student and predict what their performance will be in their first year of college. An immense amount of pressure is put on student to receive certain scores in order to obtain scholarships and admission into college. Even just one point on a student’s score can determine if they will be accepted into their dream college. However, the results from standardized tests, such as the ACT and SAT, are often inaccurate. Because of this one’s knowledge and academic ability are misrepresented, and they are denied certain opportunities. Standardized tests such as the ACT and the SAT

Today, it can be observed that society has shifted education drastically from the time schools were constituted, to now. Throughout history, schools have gone from private, where only the elite can attend, to public schools where virtually anyone can attend. One of the factors that goes along with education is standardized testing. Frederick J. Kelly, father of the standardized test, once said, “These tests are too crude to be used, and should be abandoned.” Not only has this shift occurred within education itself, but it has occurred within the testing concepts found within standardized testing so much so that the founder of these tests has chosen to give up on it.

One of the biggest topics in the educational world is standardized tests. All fifty states have their own standards following the common core curriculum. There are many positives and negatives that go with the standardized tests. A standardized test is any type of “examination that's administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner” (Popham, 1999). These standardized tests are either aptitude tests or achievement tests. Schools use achievement tests to compare students.

Achievement test- for example in a sat test, they will test you on what you’ve learned in the past years in high school, they will in what subject you are better or not better in.

After a long year of teaching the core curriculum standards, every year in the spring, students are to take a progress test to determine if they have learned the minimum required, to determine if their teacher had taught effectively. When I think about assessments, I think about State assessments, standardized test, Maps, and AYP. However not all assessments are test. There are many different types of assessments, for example, there are comprehensive, formative, summative, and performance assessments. Different types of assessments help guide students to do the very best work they are capable of doing.

Although standardized tests do not accurately represent a student’s performance and future, they do present the opportunity to test an individual’s general knowledge. The tests also give students the chance to test their test-taking efficiency and time management, whether or not the individual is under tremendous amounts of stress. With these assessments, students can rank their performance and improve for future tests.

testing is a way to determine if a student has enough knowledge to do well in advanced classes.

Throughout their whole lives, students go through numerous tests. Some of these tests are just simple, mind tests they perform on themselves and there are others that are very hard, semester review tests. However, what people do not realize is the amount of standardized testing that children go through nowadays.

Rather the types of questions students will see on the tests already correlate with the curriculum being taught, along with basic skills students need to have mastered. However, if a teacher is aware that a potential test question has not been covered in the curriculum they most often will incorporate it into the lesson plans in order to successfully prepare students. Standardized testing is simply used as a way to determine if students are able to answer cumulative questions based on the curriculum they have

With all the time it takes to prepare for these test it takes time away from the classroom which directly infringes on classroom learning.

Another test is College testing, the testing in college is split. Admission testing which is usually the ACT, SAT or PSAT which usually high school students need to take before they can be admitted to a university. But, remember the types of colleges have different standards into getting

By the time students reach their first year of a university they have already experienced being academically and physically tested multiple times through their school life. Standardized testing has become a constant and has been engrained in most aspects of academic life. And with the added bonus of a global race to produce the best and the brightest, it seems as though the government and University institutions are increasingly happy and proud of their results as the frequency of standardized testing is on the rise.