Are you sitting there, pencil in hand, staring at the packet in front of you and wondering, “Why do I have to do this silly exam?” Guess what? You shouldn’t have to! Standardized tests are an inaccurate way of assessing someone’s capability and knowledge of a subject. First of all, they can’t really get the total and highest potential of a student taking the exam if they have a time limit. They should have as much time as they want or at least extended time, so that it’s possible for all the students to finish, in order to show what they can really do.
Standardized testing has not improved student achievement. According to research done by standardizedtestsprocon.org, as of 2002, the U.S slipped from 18th in the world in math on the Programme of International Student Assessment to 31st place in 2009, with a similar drop in science and no change in reading. According to the National Research Council, no evidence shows that test-based incentive programs are working. “Despite using them for several decades, policymakers and educators do not yet know how to use test-based incentives to consistently generate positive effects on achievement and to improve education.” Now if you were being forced to take a test, wouldn’t you want to know that it is having positive effects on your education and that something is being learned from it?
These exams are an unreliable measure of student performance. 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…” Meaning, that not only were the test scores not really getting better, but the changes in the students’ education were not improving their learning. This only proves that the exam results are neither accurate nor useful.
If test makers are trying to capture the level of higher-level thinking of students and grade them based on what they wrote and then use the information to grade a teacher’s performance or school’s education system, they shouldn’t have uneducated workers grading open-ended questions. According to standardizedtestsprocon.org, test graders make $11.00- $13.00 per hour and they only need a bachelor’s degree, which is not relative to education. A former test scorer stated that, “All it takes to become a test scorer is a bachelor’s degree, a lack of a steady job, and a willingness to throw independent thinking out the window.” Test graders should be well educated, especially in the field they are working; otherwise, the students and teachers are not being assessed fairly.
Yes, the standardized tests do provide a source of information on a group of students as a whole, and they can give results for statistics on how well a school is doing academically. They also give the United States a percentage status of how well it’s education system is doing and allows us to compare ourselves to other countries. What these exams don’t do is measure creativity, critical thinking and other important aspects of one’s learning and thinking that are also important for college aptitude and career readiness.
If teachers teach towards standardized tests, gaps in student learning occur. Standardized tests also take away time from other key subjects like science and history. A five-year University of Maryland study completed in 2007 found “the pressure teachers were feeling to teach to the test since the No Child Left Behind Act, was leading to declines in teaching higher-order thinking as well as in the amount of time spent on complex assignments.” Some schools spend over a quarter of a year in preparing for these exams, incorporating one to two hours worth of practice test sessions, which is completely unbelievable.
Standardized tests should stop being given out to schools and students because they are putting too much pressure and stress on kids, they are taking away from student’s education, they are slowing down the curriculum. These negative effects outweigh the benefits of what these tests should be providing, and unfortunately, these practices will remain until something is, and should be, changed.