Standardized testing is among the most divisive topics in Education policy. With a growing emphasis on international competition, proponents of common core initiatives believe that testing will boost student scores and help the US surge in education rankings. Yet, in this pursuit for academic excellence, the U.S. education system has lost sight of some of the core values which have made it so successful.
In this blog post, I’ll try to analyze some of the strengths and weaknesses of standardized testing, as well as discuss some alternative strategies to gauge student performance.
Means for Comparison
In an educational system that has increasingly pushed for a nationalized curriculum, standardized tests offer a simple way to measure school and teacher effectiveness. They help create a robust set of guidelines for teachers to instruct their students, and limit the potential for inconsistency across school districts. More importantly though, they mathematically identify the correlation – or lack thereof – between what’s being taught and what’s being learnt in the classroom.
As Dr. Gall Gross, PhD educator and psychologist, points out, “testing gives the teacher important diagnostic information about what each child is learning in relation to what he has been taught. Only in this way can the teacher know if the student needs intervention and remediation… or if the teaching methods needed are in some way lacking and require adjustment.”
Moreover, standardized tests can be useful during the college admission process, particularly for elite, selective schools. Although qualitative assessments of applicant profiles engender creativity and diversity on college campuses, tests like the SAT and ACT can supplement the more relativistic features of college applications. After all, the quality of a student’s extracurricular activities can vary based on his/her socio-economic background, but it’s fairly tough to dispute the validity of their test scores when compared to other peers.
Unreliable Data
On the flip side of the matter, test scores can provide highly volatile and unreliable information about students’ understanding of classwork, especially in poorer, inner-city schools.
Here’s how it works: Most companies that specialize in developing standardized tests – such as Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Harcourt – operate in the private sector, meaning that they can independently determine the content of their exams. While such tests are supposed to evaluate general knowledge in a given subject, they are often instead based on specific, obscure facts that aren’t taught in most public school curriculums. Thus, the test makers can force school districts to buy their textbooks/study guides to better prepare for their tests, materials which many city schools can’t afford.
There is a clear discrepancy in the resources available to suburban and urban school districts. For instance, schools in Philadelphia, one of the largest urban communities in the US, on average owned a paltry 27 percent of the necessary books for standardized tests. Before these exams can be considered to accurately reflect test performance, schools in lower income neighborhoods must be provided with more funding to ensure equal opportunity.
Impacts on Public Schools
Many critics believe that standardized tests have started to exceed the financial and psychological thresholds that most public schools can bear. According to a study published by the Council of the Great City Schools, “A typical student takes 112 mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarten classes and 12th grade.” For perspective, several of the nations rated higher than the US in math and English take only 3 tests during the course of their primary education.
Testing levels usually reach their peak for students in eighth grade, when students are required to almost eleven standardized tests.
Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, offered his explain as to why testing has become such a prevalent model in US education. “You’ve got multiple actors requiring, urging and encouraging a variety of tests for very different reasons that don’t necessarily add up to a clear picture of how our kids are doing. The result is an assessment system that’s not very intelligent and not coherent.”
The Bottom Line
For many educational experts, standardized testing is the imperfect answer to an imperfect process. It’s difficult to reconcile the need to encourage individuality while also maintaining a rigorous structure with which to assess students. Nonetheless, there are ways to markedly improve the entire process through budget re-allocation and the de-privatization of testing services, and these are crucial conversations to have moving forward.
I think you present a lot of really interesting ideas in your blog. You really do a good job at looking at both sides of the issue, especially since this topic affects Different people in different ways. As juniors and seniors in high schools, it seems like so much attention is drawn to standardized tests. Before the application process, so many people are expecting students to balance their schoolwork, extracurriculars, and make time to study for standardized tests. In some ways, it may even be considered that standardized tests detract from a student’s education at school. While it may be true that standardized tests are a way to hold teachers and students accountable, and is a means in which to create a “standard” in which to educate students, the score issued from these tests are often defining in terms of what schools a student can into for college and how they decide to further their education. Regardless of how many times a student takes the tests, their performance is being judged on a single day and does not take into account external factors. Additionally, on the administrative side of things, schools are judged based on the performance of their students on standardized tests, possible further encouraging the idea that teachers could be “teaching to the test”.
As a student, I can identify more with the pressure of having to do well on a test on a single day. I was someone who took the SAT three times and the ACT two times, which I believe is above the average amount of times someone takes it. Even though in recent years the tests have changed, I don’t believe that is helping some of the biases that come from standardized tests. More colleges and universities are starting to acknowledge this and have opted to no longer require standardized tests scores. However, in making it optional, this could make cause an admissions to make an assumption about the student: “Did they not submit a test score because they didn’t do well?” The college admissions game is ever changing and standardized tests plays a significant role in that.
http://standardizedtests.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=006521
i feel as Though There are better ways of testing. I just Don’t think that there is anyway of doing that at the current time. Therefore Standardized testing is the best way to go about comparing students. The issue does arise though of some Students just not being the best test takers. i myself am not too bad at taking these kinds of tests but i do know many people who do struggle with these tests, but are by no means less Intelligent than me. these types of tests do set a Standard for all students and with that it allows students to be put on a fair playing Field. collages though Aren’t just looking at what Your Standardized scores are, they are also looking at who you are as a person. for Example at penn state in order to get into the honors collage you are required to write essays not take some kind of a test. i feel as though writing is better way to Understand a person rather than Science and math questions. asking a person questions will allow you to see what kind of Person that is. writing is also used in all kinds of material. there is Definitely a better way of testing we just having created that yet.