standardized testing argumentative essay

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Here’s Why We Don’t Need Standardized Tests

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There are two main arguments against using standardized tests to guarantee that students reach at least a basic level of academic competency. The first is radical: These tests are not necessary. The second—less radical and more familiar—is that, even if standardized testing were an efficient benchmark of basic skills, the costs associated with it are too high.

Standardized tests are unnecessary because they rarely show what we don’t already know. Ask any teacher and she can tell you which students can read and write. That telling usually comes in the form of letter grades or evaluations that break down progress on skills. So trust the teacher. Publish grade distributions. Locally publish a compilation of evaluation reports. Release a state or national report reviewed and verified by expert evaluators with legislative oversight.

People will say: “That’s crazy! Schools will fudge results. Grade data means nothing because teachers apply different standards with different values. Let’s give them all one reliable test. And won’t this proposal create a whole new bureaucracy?”

All true (except for the one test being reliable). Given high stakes and the accompanying pressure, people will game a system. And it is all too true that grades vary widely because of four factors: a teacher’s conception of achievement, a teacher’s sense of equity and rigor, a teacher’s ability, and the composition of students.

But people are already gaming standardized testing, sometimes criminally. And, at a basic level of competency, a grade or an evaluative report would give us as much information as we now get from standardized tests.

We have the grade problem at my high school. In the same course or department, a B in one classroom might be an A, or even a C, in another. It’s a problem for us, and, likely, a problem in most schools.

To sum up, we don’t learn much from standardized accountability, and we have lost a great deal by giving it so much prominence.

But it has also been an opportunity. Recognizing our grading differences, we opted to create a common conception of achievement, our graduate profile, and department learning outcomes with rubrics. Our standards now align closely with the Common Core State Standards. Second, we created common performance tasks that measure these standards and formative assessments that scaffold to them. Third, we look together at student work. Fourth, we have begun to grade each other’s students on these common tasks.

We could publish the results of these performance tasks, and the public would have a good idea of what we’re good at and what we’re not. For example, our students effectively employ reading strategies to comprehend a text, but are often stymied by a lack of vocabulary or complex syntax. We’ve also learned most of our students can coherently develop a claim, citing the appropriate evidence to support it when choosing from a restricted universe of data. They aren’t as good when the universe of data is broadened. They are mediocre at analysis, counter-arguments, rebuttals, and evaluation of sources, though they have recently gotten better at evaluating sources as we have improved our instruction and formative assessments. A small percentage of our students do not show even basic competency in reading and writing.

That’s better information than we’ve ever received from standardized testing. What’s also started to happen is that teachers who use the same standards and rubrics, assign the same performance tasks, and grade each other’s work are finding their letter grades starting to align.

And, this approach has led to a lot of frank discussions. For example, why are grades different? Where we have looked, different conceptions of achievement and rigor seem most important. So we have to talk about it. The more we do, the more aligned we will become, and the more honest picture of achievement we can create. It has been fantastic professional development—done without external mandates. We have a long way to go, but we can understand the value of our efforts and see improvement in student work.

I would not advocate publishing individual teachers’ grades because it would cause the same problems as publishing individual teachers’ standardized-test results, but grades by subject, grade level, and demographic categories could be fair game externally. Internally, those breakdowns should stimulate hard conversations and necessary professional development. Of course, this proposal would have to be negotiated and modified locally to avoid the punishment/reward cycle of other accountability measures that force people to conform and tempt them to cheat. The goal is to spur the collaboration and conversation necessary for improvement.

Well, that’s your district, some might say. It’s got a unique collaborative culture and a better sense of achievement than most. You can’t do that across the nation.

Why not? With the common core, a definition of achievement exists. And teachers are more likely to respond to professional development and accountability more concretely connected to their daily work. They are more likely to improve.

That leads to the second argument. Even if standardized testing were not only desirable to give the public a picture of basic competencies, but also an efficient way to do so, the costs have been too great.

Many have previously made cogent arguments (unrealistic definitions of achievement, skewed instructional schemes, inequitable curricular offerings, inevitable corruption, perverted charter school missions, alienation, disempowerment, and embarrassment of educators, etc.) in this vein, but let’s think about a supposed example of success on this front—a school with the high test scores.

In general, such a school has a compliant or affluent population. Test scores are a point of pride. The school has a good reputation. But, when you go in and observe, the teaching and learning do not impress.

Never once have I looked at the test scores of this kind of school and thought, “How could I be more like them?” That’s because success represented just a score on a narrow test of a limited band of achievement (a test, by the way, with content that I was not even legally allowed to talk about), and I couldn’t see how looking at that score could help me in my day-to-day teaching. Even worse, I don’t think the teachers at such schools have learned much from their good scores. If anything, the scores have prevented them from becoming better.

So, to sum up, we don’t learn much from standardized testing, and we have lost a great deal by giving it so much prominence. The common core is at risk for failure, not because the standards are bad per se, but because with standardized accountability, as in so many partial reforms, we again won’t get a real picture of achievement, people will be disappointed, and the standards and testing will run their course.

Instead, why not just trust teachers and schools to report the progress of their students with the measures they have, and use internal and external local pressures to improve the measures and practices? It will avoid a plethora of social, emotional, and political costs. Any bureaucracy created can’t be more of a drag on the government or economy than the legion of consultants and think tanks today feeding off the trough of education. This proposal is more in line with what we know about the success of sustainable local organizations and what we know about the inflated rise and inevitable fall of mass reform movements.

A version of this article appeared in the July 10, 2014 edition of Education Week as We Don’t Need Standardized Tests. Here’s Why.

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Example Of Standardized Testing: Detrimental To Todays American Students Argumentative Essay

Type of paper: Argumentative Essay

Topic: Education , United States , Teaching , Family , America , Students , Testing , Success

Words: 1300

Published: 02/19/2020

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For more than a decade, the debate over how to measure American children’s progress in school has raged in the media, among teachers, parents, politicians, and researchers. American educators try to assess the success of teachers’ methods and students’ work through a variety of methods, including standardized testing. They compare students not only to others throughout the nation, but attempt to relate the results to how students all over the world are doing. Since 2002 when President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) into law, for “the first time in U.S. history, NCLB made federal funding for K-12 public schools contingent upon the use of standardized achievement tests to assess student performance” (Duckworth, Quinn, and Tsukayama, p. 440). In spite of its positive-sounding name, NCLB and its emphasis on standardized testing has not helped American students to reach the top of academic success either nationally or in comparison to its global competitors (Khazan). There are several reasons why the emphasis on standardized testing is detrimental for today’s American students. Standardized testing assumes that every child should accomplish the same level of success no matter the student’s advantages and disadvantages such as wealth, intelligence, or personality and punishes teachers, schools, and students for failing to meet this impossible goal, it fails to encourage other importance of learning such a self-control and creativity, and does not account for methods of teaching and has little value for individual students in predicting future academic success or personal educational needs. It is well known that students who come from wealthier areas are at an advantage over poor or minority students when it comes to having success in school. According to educator Alfie Khan, two things that place minority and low-income students at a disadvantage are the innate bias of the tests which “require a set of knowledge and skills more likely to be possessed by children from a privileged background” as well as the fact that wealthier students’ parents can afford additional tutoring and test-preparation materials that low-income parents cannot (3). Unfortunately, for schools that lack the funding of a wealthy tax-base supporting its students, the resources to help children succeed in school may simply not be available to teachers. Schools whose students fail to perform well on NCLB’s required testing are punished with denial of funding, which makes the task of succeeding academically more difficult not only for students, but also for the teachers who want to see their students succeed. While the threat of losing funding is supposed to motivate schools, teachers, and parents to push students to success, as Dr. Joshua Starr, superintendent of Montgomery County Schools in Maryland says, “I don’t know any business that motivates its employees by shaming them and demonizing them” (Silva). Standardized testing has served to be a tool used as evidence to punish schools and can defeat its own purpose by being ultimately responsible for resources being taken away from the struggling schools that need them the most. Schools have become so focused on teaching in a way that will maximize their students’ scores on standardized tests that they neglect to include other things in their curriculums that encourage academic and career success such as self-control, creativity, innovation, and more. Researchers Duckworth, Quinn, and Tsukayama discovered that “standardized achievement test scores and report card grades differentially reflect intelligence and self-control, two distinct traits shown in prior studies to predict successful functioning in—and beyond—the classroom” (2012, p. 441). In other words, although a student may do very well on a standardized test, the test does not reflect the overall capabilities of the student. such as how well the student can innovate, lead, or come up with solutions to complex or creative problems. It can only measure how well a student can take a multiple-choice test on a particular subject such as math or English. What this means is that for students whose education has focused on teaching them how to take a standardized successfully, the same student may be completely unprepared for the challenges of higher education or the world of work. Another problem with the focus on standardized testing is that it does not account for methods of teaching. Again, the rankings resulting from the results of these tests only measure students’ abilities in taking multiple-choice exams. According to researchers Duckworth, Quinn, and Tsukayama, “teachers judged the most important purpose of standardized achievement tests to be the comparison of a student’s performance to that of other students” (2012, p. 31). These standardized tests tell educators nothing about why their students are generally experiencing success or failure in the classroom. It provides no useful data on whether their students are prepared for college or to enter the work force. It simply says that a student is doing better or worse than other students. An exam that provides such limited data is a futile exercise that pits one school against another in the fight to obtain precious and scarce economic resources vital to retaining good teachers, obtaining good educational materials, and being able to offer classes and other programs that will allow students to be successful, competitive members of the 21st century global work force. There are many alternatives to educational systems like America’s that rely on standardized testing as a foundation and basis for almost all of children’s learning today. Singapore and Finland offer wildly different models, yet both surpass American students in math, science, and language testing. In Singapore’s system, which “tracks” students according to their academic abilities, students take a test that determines almost all of their future educational options such as going to a school for the gifted or vocational school after six years of primary school (Khazan). While this method has made Singapore’s students successful, it seems like an impossible method for Americans to embrace; Americans would like to believe that if anyone works hard enough, he or she can go to college, become a doctor, a dot com millionaire, and so on. Americans want to believe that any student can attend the best colleges if he or she works hard enough, unlike Singapore’s system where factors such as intelligence and talents may limit a student’s choices for higher education. On the other hand, in Finland, “schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play, there are no standardized tests, and teaching is a high-status profession that pays well and requires at least a master’s degree (Khazan). American students need to excel in order to be able to promote the country as a contender in the highly competitive and globalized economy of the 21st century. Unfortunately, NCLB and its emphasis on standardized testing does not appear to be the solution that will push American students toward the top of the world’s students in academic achievement. America must examine the methods of its own educational systems and those of successful countries around the world, placing less focus on standardized tests and more on how schools prepare students for their futures.

Works Cited

Duckworth, Angela L., Quinn, Patrick D., and Tsukayama, Eli. What No Child Left Behind Leaves Behind: The Roles of IQ and Self-Control in Predicting Standardized Achievement Test Scores and Report Card Grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(2). May 2012. Web. <http://jenni.uchicago.edu/Spencer_Conference/ Papers%202010/Duckworth_Quinn_Tsukayama_2010_What%20No%20Child%20Left%20Behind%20Leaves%20Behind.pdf>. Khazan, Olga. Here’s Why Other Countries Beat the U.S. in Reading and Math. The Washington Post. 11 Dec. 2012. Web. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/ wp/2012/12/11/heres-why-other-countries-beat-the-u-s-in-reading-and-math/>. Kohn, Alfie. Standardized Testing and Its Victims. Education Week, 27. Sep. 2000. Web. <http://math.buffalostate.edu/~med600/handouts/KohnTesting.pdf>. Silva, Daniella. Education Experts Debate High-Stakes Testing in Public Schools. NBCNEWS.com. Web. <http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/07/20855554-education-experts-debate-high-stakes-testing-in-public-schools>.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, 5 paragraph argumentative essay example.

Hey everyone, I have to write a 5 paragraph argumentative essay for my English class. Does anyone have a good example that I could use as a reference? Thanks in advance!

Hey there! Of course, I'd be happy to provide you with an example of a 5 paragraph argumentative essay to use as a reference. Here's a sample essay arguing that schools should eliminate the use of standardized tests in admissions:

Introduction:

Standardized tests, such as the SAT and ACT, have long been used as a metric to evaluate academic achievement in American schools. However, this reliance on standardized testing has created a culture of test preparation that places undue pressure on students, teachers, and schools, while failing to provide an accurate representation of a student's abilities. This essay argues that schools should eliminate the use of standardized tests in admissions in favor of a more holistic approach that better reflects a student's academic capabilities and potential.

Body Paragraph 1 - Argument: Standardized tests do not accurately measure intelligence or potential.

- Studies have shown that standardized test scores often correlate with socioeconomic status, revealing biases against students from lower-income families, who may have fewer resources to prepare for these exams.

- Many talented students with unique skills and interests can be disadvantaged by this narrow assessment of their abilities.

- Creativity, critical thinking, and soft skills like communication and teamwork are better indicators of an individual's potential but are not measured by standardized tests.

Body Paragraph 2 - Counterargument: Standardized tests provide an objective measure for college admissions.

- Unlike grades, which can vary between schools and teachers, standardized test scores offer a common benchmark for evaluating students across different backgrounds.

- However, the growing number of colleges that have gone test-optional or test-blind demonstrates that schools can effectively assess applicants without relying on standardized test scores.

Body Paragraph 3 - Argument: Removing standardized tests can reduce stress and improve student wellbeing.

- The intense pressure to achieve high test scores can lead to unhealthy levels of stress, sleep deprivation, and even cheating.

- Without the emphasis on standardized tests, students and educators can focus on more meaningful academic goals and projects that foster genuine learning and personal growth.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the reliance on standardized tests in admissions is an outdated and flawed method for determining a student's overall potential. By eliminating these tests and embracing a more holistic approach, schools can create a more equitable and accurate appraisal of applicants, reduce stress among students, and foster a healthier learning environment that emphasizes the development of diverse skills and talents.

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

Effects of Standardized Testing on Students & Teachers: Key Benefits & Challenges

The use of standardized testing to measure academic achievement in US schools has fueled debate for nearly two decades. Understanding the effects of standardized testing—its key benefits and challenges—requires a closer examination of what standardized testing is and how it’s used in academic settings.

Developing ways to effectively and fairly measure academic achievement is an ongoing challenge for school administrators. For those inspired to promote greater equity in education, American University’s online Doctor of Education (EdD) in Education Policy and Leadership provides the knowledge and training to address such challenges.

What Are Standardized Tests?

Standardized tests are examinations administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner. They typically rely heavily on question formats, such as multiple choice and true or false, that can be automatically scored. Not limited to academic settings, standardized tests are widely used to measure academic aptitude and achievement.

The ACT and SAT, standardized tests used broadly for college admissions, assess students’ current educational development and their aptitude for completing college-level work. Standardized academic achievement tests are mandatory in primary and secondary schools in the US, where they’re designed and administered at the state or local level and used to assess requirements for federal education funding.

Standardized testing requirements are designed to hold teachers, students, and schools accountable for academic achievement and to incentivize improvement. They provide a benchmark for assessing problems and measuring progress, highlighting areas for improvement.

Despite these key benefits, standardized academic achievement tests in US public schools have been controversial since their inception. Major points of contention have centered on who should design and administer tests (federal, state, or district level), how often they should be given, and whether they place some school districts at an advantage or disadvantage. More critically, parents and educators have questioned whether standardized tests are fair to teachers and students.

Effects of Standardized Testing on Students

Some of the challenging potential effects of standardized testing on students are as follows:

• Standardized test scores are often tied to important outcomes, such as graduation and school funding. Such high-stakes testing can place undue stress on students and affect their performance.
• Standardized tests fail to account for students who learn and demonstrate academic proficiency in different ways. For example, a student who struggles to answer a multiple-choice question about grammar or punctuation may be an excellent writer.
• By placing emphasis on reading, writing, and mathematics, standardized tests have devalued instruction in areas such as the arts, history, and electives.
• Standardized tests are thought to be fair because every student takes the same test and evaluations are largely objective, but a one-size-fits-all approach to testing is arguably biased because it fails to account for variables such as language deficiencies, learning disabilities, difficult home lives, or varying knowledge of US cultural conventions.

Effects of Standardized Testing on Teachers

Teachers as well as students can be challenged by the effects of standardized testing. Common issues include the following:

• The need to meet specific testing standards pressures teachers to “teach to the test” rather than providing a broad curriculum.
• Teachers have expressed frustration about the time it takes to prepare for and administer tests.
• Teachers may feel excessive pressure from their schools and administrators to improve their standardized test scores.
• Standardized tests measure achievement against goals rather than measuring progress.
• Achievement test scores are commonly assumed to have a strong correlation with teaching effectiveness, a tendency that can place unfair blame on good teachers if scores are low and obscure teaching deficiencies if scores are high.

Alternative Achievement Assessments

Critics of standardized testing often point to various forms of performance-based assessments as preferable alternatives. Known by various names (proficiency-based, competency-based), they require students to produce work that demonstrates high-level thinking and real-world applications. Examples include an experiment illustrating understanding of a scientific concept, group work that addresses complex problems and requires discussion and presentation, or essays that include analysis of a topic.

Portfolio-based assessments emphasize the process of learning over letter grades and normative performance. Portfolios can be made up of physical documents or digital collections. They can include written assignments, completed tests, honors and awards, art and graphic work, lab reports, or other documents that demonstrate either progress or achievement. Portfolios can provide students with an opportunity to choose work they wish to reflect on and present.

Performance-based assessments aren’t a practical alternative to standardized tests, but they offer a different way of evaluating knowledge that can provide a more complete picture of student achievement. Determining which systems of evaluation work best in specific circumstances and is an ongoing challenge for education administrators.

Work for Better Student Outcomes with a Doctorate in Education

Addressing the most critical challenges facing educators, including fair and accurate assessment of academic achievement, requires administrators with exceptional leadership and policy expertise. Discover how the online EdD in Education Policy and Leadership at American University prepares educators to create equitable learning environments and effect positive change.

EdD vs. PhD in Education: Requirements, Career Outlook, and Salary

Education Policy Issues in 2020 and Beyond

Path to Becoming a School District Administrator

American University School of Education, Creative Alternatives to Standardized Test Taking

Scholars Strategy Network, How to Improve American Schooling with Less High-Stakes Testing and More Investment in Teacher Development

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Do Standardized Tests Improve Education in America?

History of Standardized Testing

Standardized tests have been a part of American  education  since the mid-1800s. Their use skyrocketed after 2002’s  No Child Left Behind Act  (NCLB) mandated annual testing in all 50 states. However, failures in the education system have been blamed on rising  poverty  levels, teacher quality, tenure policies, and, increasingly, on the pervasive use of standardized tests.

Standardized tests are defined as “any test that’s administered, scored, and interpreted in a standard, predetermined manner,” according to by W. James Popham, former President of the American Educational Research Association. The tests often have multiple-choice questions that can be quickly graded by automated test scoring machines. Some tests also incorporate open-ended questions that require human grading. Read more history…

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1 Standardized tests offer an objective measurement of education. Teachers’ grading practices are naturally uneven and subjective. An A in one class may be a C in another. Teachers also have conscious or unconscious biases for a favorite student or against a rowdy student, for example. Standardized tests offer students a unified measure of their knowledge without these subjective differences. [ 56 ] “At their core, standardized exams are designed to be objective measures. They assess students based on a similar set of questions, are given under nearly identical testing conditions, and are graded by a machine or blind reviewer. They are intended to provide an accurate, unfiltered measure of what a student knows,” says Aaron Churchill, Ohio Research Director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. [ 56 ] Frequently states or local jurisdictions employ psychometricians to ensure tests are fair across populations of students. Mark Moulon, CEO at Pythias Consulting and psychometrician, offers an example: “What’s cool about psychometrics is that it will flag stuff that a human would never be able to notice. I remember a science test that had been developed in California and it asked about earthquakes. But the question was later used in a test that was administered in New England. When you try to analyze the New England kids with the California kids, you would get a differential item functioning flag because the California kids were all over the subject of earthquakes, and the kids in Vermont had no idea about earthquakes.” [ 57 ] With problematic questions removed, or adapted for different populations of students, standardized tests offer the best objective measure of what students have learned. Taking that information, schools can determine areas for improvement. As Bryan Nixon, former Head of School, noted, “When we receive standardized test data at Whitby, we use it to evaluate the effectiveness of our education program. We view standardized testing data as not only another set of data points to assess student performance, but also as a means to help us reflect on our curriculum. When we look at Whitby’s assessment data, we can compare our students to their peers at other schools to determine what we’re doing well within our educational continuum and where we need to invest more time and resources.” [ 58 ] Read More

Pro 2 Standardized tests help students in marginalized groups. “If I don’t have testing data to make sure my child’s on the right track, I’m not able to intervene and say there is a problem and my child needs more. And the community can’t say this school is doing well, this teacher needs help to improve, or this system needs new leadership…. It’s really important to have a statewide test because of the income disparity that exists in our society. Black and Brown excellence is real, but… it is unfair to say that just by luck of birth that a child born in [a richer section of town] is somehow entitled to a higher-quality education… Testing is a tool for us to hold the system accountable to make sure our kids have what they need,” explains Keri Rodrigues, Co-founder of the National Parents Union. [ 59 ] Advocates for marginalized groups of students, whether by race, learning disability, or other difference, can use testing data to prove a problem exists and to help solve the problem via more funding, development of programs, or other solutions. Civil rights education lawsuits wherein a group is suing a local or state government for better education almost always use testing data. [ 61 ] Sheryl Lazarus, Director of the National Center on Educational Outcomes at the University of Minnesota, states, “a real plus of these assessments is that… they have led to improvements in access to instruction for students with disabilities and English learners… Inclusion of students with disabilities and English learners in summative tests used for accountability allows us to measure how well the system is doing for these students, and then it is possible to fill in gaps in instructional opportunity.” [ 60 ] A letter signed by 12 civil rights organizations including the NAACP and the American Association of University Women, explains, “Data obtained through some standardized tests are particularly important to the civil rights community because they are the only available, consistent, and objective source of data about disparities in educational outcomes, even while vigilance is always required to ensure tests are not misused. These data are used to advocate for greater resource equity in schools and more fair treatment for students of color, low-income students, students with disabilities, and English learners… [W]e cannot fix what we cannot measure. And abolishing the tests or sabotaging the validity of their results only makes it harder to identify and fix the deep-seated problems in our schools.” [ 62 ] Read More

Pro 3 Standardized tests scores are good indicators of college and job success. Standardized tests can promote and offer evidence of academic rigor, which is invaluable in college as well as in students’ careers. Matthew Pietrafetta, Founder of Academic Approach, argues that the “tests create gravitational pull toward higher achievement.” [ 65 ] Elaine Riordan, senior communications professional at Actively Learn, states, “creating learning environments that lead to higher test scores is also likely to improve students’ long-term success in college and beyond… Recent research suggests that the competencies that the SAT, ACT, and other standardized tests are now evaluating are essential not just for students who will attend four-year colleges but also for those who participate in CTE [career and technical education] programs or choose to seek employment requiring associate degrees and certificates…. all of these students require the same level of academic mastery to be successful after high school graduation.” [ 66 ] Standardized test scores have long been correlated with better college and life outcomes. As Dan Goldhaber, Director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, and Umut Özek, senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research, explain, “students who score one standard deviation higher on math tests at the end of high school have been shown to earn 12% more annually, or $3,600 for each year of work life in 2001.… Similarly… test scores are significantly correlated not only with educational attainment and labor market outcomes (employment, work experience, choice of occupation), but also with risky behavior (teenage pregnancy, smoking, participation in illegal activities).” [ 67 ] Read More

Pro 4 Standardized tests are useful metrics for teacher evaluations. While grades and other measures are useful for teacher evaluations, standardized tests provide a consistent measure across classrooms and schools. Individual school administrators, school districts, and the state can compare teachers using test scores to show how each teacher has helped students master core concepts. [ 63 ] Timothy Hilton, a high school social studies teacher in South Central Los Angeles, states, “No self-respecting teacher would use a single student grade on a single assignment as a final grade for the entirety of a course, so why would we rely on one source of information in the determination of a teacher’s overall quality? The more data that can be provided, the more accurate the teacher evaluation decisions will end up being. Teacher evaluations should incorporate as many pieces of data as possible. Administration observation, student surveys, student test scores, professional portfolios, and on and on. The more data that is used, the more accurate the picture it will paint.” [ 64 ] Read More

Con 1 Standardized tests only determine which students are good at taking tests. Standardized test scores are easily influenced by outside factors: stress, hunger, tiredness, and prior teacher or parent comments about the difficulty of the test, among other factors. In short, the tests only show which students are best at preparing for and taking the tests, not what knowledge students might exhibit if their stomachs weren’t empty or they’d had a good night’s sleep. [ 68 ] [ 69 ] Further, students are tested on grade-appropriate material, but they are not re-tested to determine if they have learned information they tested poorly on the year before. Instead, as Steve Martinez, Superintendent of Twin Rivers Unified in California, and Rick Miller, Executive Director of CORE Districts, note: each “state currently reports yearly change, by comparing the scores of this year’s students against the scores of last year’s students who were in the same grade. Even though educators, parents and policymakers might think change signals impact, it says much more about the change in who the students are because it is not measuring the growth of the same student from one year to the next.” And, because each state develops its own tests, standardized tests are not necessarily comparable across state lines, leaving nationwide statistics shaky at best. [ 69 ] [ 71 ] [ 72 ] Brandon Busteed, Executive Director, Education & Workforce Development at the time of the quote, stated, “Despite an increased focus on standardized testing, U.S. results in international comparisons show we have made no significant improvement over the past 20 years…. The U.S. most recently ranked 23rd, 39th and 25th in reading, math and science, respectively. The last time Americans celebrated being 23rd, 39th and 25th in anything was … well, never. Our focus on standardized testing hasn’t helped us improve our results!” [ 73 ] Busteed asks, “What if our overreliance on standardized testing has actually inhibited our ability to help students succeed and achieve in a multitude of other dimensions? For example, how effective are schools at identifying and educating students with high entrepreneurial talent? Or at training students to apply creative thinking to solve messy and complex issues with no easy answers?” [ 73 ] Read More

Con 2 Standardized tests are racist, classist, and sexist. The origin of American standardized tests are those created by psychologist Carl Brigham, PhD, for the Army during World War I, which was later adapted to become the SAT. The Army tests were created specifically to segregate soldiers by race, because at the time science inaccurately linked intelligence and race. [ 74 ] Racial bias has not been stripped from standardized tests. “Too often, test designers rely on questions which assume background knowledge more often held by White, middle-class students. It’s not just that the designers have unconscious racial bias; the standardized testing industry depends on these kinds of biased questions in order to create a wide range of scores,” explains Young Whan Choi, Manager of Performance Assessments Oakland Unified School District in Oakland, California. He offers an example from his own 10th grade class, “a student called me over with a question. With a puzzled look, she pointed to the prompt asking students to write about the qualities of someone who would deserve a ‘key to the city.’ Many of my students, nearly all of whom qualified for free and reduced lunch, were not familiar with the idea of a ‘key to the city.’” [ 76 ] Wealthy kids, who would be more familiar with a “key to the city,” tend to have higher standardized test scores due to differences in brain development caused by factors such as “access to enriching educational resources, and… exposure to spoken language and vocabulary early in life.” Plus, as Eloy Ortiz Oakley, Chancellor of California Community Colleges, points out, “Many well-resourced students have far greater access to test preparation, tutoring and taking the test multiple times, opportunities not afforded the less affluent…. [T]hese admissions tests are a better measure of students’ family background and economic status than of their ability to succeed” [ 77 ] [ 78 ] Journalist and teacher Carly Berwick explains, “All students do not do equally well on multiple choice tests, however. Girls tend to do less well than boys and [girls] perform better on questions with open-ended answers, according to a [Stanford University] study, …which found that test format alone accounts for 25 percent of the gender difference in performance in both reading and math. Researchers hypothesize that one explanation for the gender difference on high-stakes tests is risk aversion, meaning girls tend to guess less.” [ 68 ] Read More

Con 3 Standardized tests scores are not predictors of future success. At best, Standardized tests can only evaluate rote knowledge of math, science, and English. The tests do not evaluate creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, artistic ability, or other knowledge areas that cannot be judged by scoring a sheet of bubbles filled in with a pencil. Grade point averages (GPA) are a five times stronger indicator of college success than standardized tests, according to a study of 55,084 Chicago public school students. One of the authors, Elaine M. Allensworth, Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium, states, “GPAs measure a very wide variety of skills and behaviors that are needed for success in college, where students will encounter widely varying content and expectations. In contrast, standardized tests measure only a small set of the skills that students need to succeed in college, and students can prepare for these tests in narrow ways that may not translate into better preparation to succeed in college.” [ 83 ] “Earning good grades requires consistent behaviors over time—showing up to class and participating, turning in assignments, taking quizzes, etc.—whereas students could in theory do well on a test even if they do not have the motivation and perseverance needed to achieve good grades. It seems likely that the kinds of habits high school grades capture are more relevant for success in college than a score from a single test,” explains Matthew M. Chingos, Vice President of Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute. [ 84 ] Read More

Con 4 Standardized tests are unfair metrics for teacher evaluations. As W. James Popham, former President of the American Educational Research Association, notes, “standardized achievement tests should not be used to determine the effectiveness of a state, a district, a school, or a teacher. There’s almost certain to be a significant mismatch between what’s taught and what’s tested.” [ 81 ] “An assistant superintendent… pointed out that in one of my four kindergarten classes, the student scores were noticeably lower, while in another, the students were outperforming the other three classes. He recommended that I have the teacher whose class had scored much lower work directly with the teacher who seemed to know how to get higher scores from her students. Seems reasonable, right? But here was the problem: The “underperforming” kindergarten teacher and the “high-performing” teacher were one and the same person,” explains Margaret Pastor, Principal of Stedwick Elementary School in Maryland. [ 82 ] As a result, 27 states and D.C. have stopped using standardized tests in teacher evaluations. [ 79 ] [ 80 ] [ 88 ] Read More

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Examining the Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing

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Like many issues in public education , standardized testing can be a controversial topic among parents, teachers, and voters. Many people say standardized testing provides an accurate measurement of student performance and teacher effectiveness. Others say such a one-size-fits-all approach to assessing academic achievement can be inflexible or even biased. Regardless of the diversity of opinion, there are some common arguments for and against standardized testing in the classroom .

Standardized Testing Pros

Proponents of standardized testing say that it is the best means of comparing data from a diverse population, allowing educators to digest large amounts of information quickly. They argue that:

It's accountable.  Probably the greatest benefit of standardized testing is that educators and schools are responsible for teaching students what they are required to know for these standardized tests. This is mostly because these scores become public record, and teachers and schools that don’t perform up to par can come under intense examination. This scrutiny can lead to the loss of jobs. In some cases, a school can be closed or taken over by the state.

It's analytical.  Without standardized testing, this comparison would not be possible. Public school students in Texas , for example, are required to take standardized tests, allowing test data from Amarillo to be compared to scores in Dallas. Being able to accurately analyze data is a primary reason that many states have adopted the Common Core state standards .

It's structured.  Standardized testing is accompanied by a set of established standards or an instructional framework to guide classroom learning and test preparation. This incremental approach creates benchmarks to measure student progress over time.

It's objective.  Standardized tests are often scored by computers or by people who do not directly know the student to remove the chance that bias would affect the scoring. Tests are also developed by experts, and each question undergoes an intense process to ensure its validity—that it properly assesses the content—and its reliability, which means that the question tests consistently over time.

It's granular.  The data generated by testing can be organized according to established criteria or factors, such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and special needs. This approach provides schools with data to develop targeted programs and services for improving student performance.

Standardized Testing Cons

Opponents of standardized testing say educators have become too fixated on scores and preparing for these exams. Some of the most common arguments against testing are:

It's inflexible.  Some students may excel in the classroom yet not perform well on a standardized test because they're unfamiliar with the format or develop test anxiety. Family strife, mental and physical health issues, and language barriers can all affect a student's test score. But standardized tests don't allow personal factors to be taken into consideration.

It's a waste of time.  Standardized testing causes many teachers to teach to the tests, meaning they only spend instructional time on material that will appear on the test. Opponents say this practice lacks creativity and can hinder a student’s overall learning potential.

It can't measure true progress.  Standardized testing only evaluates one-time performance instead of a student's progress and proficiency over time. Many would argue that teacher and student performance should be evaluated for growth over the course of the year instead of one single test.

It's stressful.  Teachers and students alike feel test stress. For educators, poor student performance may result in a loss of funding and teachers being fired. For students, a bad test score may mean missing out on admission to the college of their choice or even being held back. In Oklahoma, for example, high school students must pass four standardized tests in order to graduate, regardless of their GPA. (The state gives seven standardized end-of-instruction (EOI) exams in Algebra I, Algebra II, English II, English III, Biology I, geometry and U.S. history. Students who fail to pass at least four of these exams can’t get a high school diploma.)

It's political.  With public and charter schools both competing for the same public funds, politicians and educators have come to rely even more on standardized test scores. Some opponents of testing argue that low-performing schools are unfairly targeted by politicians who use academic performance as an excuse to further their own agendas.

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• High Stakes Testing: Overtesting in America's Public Schools
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• An Overview of the Common Core Assessments