Whether you like it or not, standardized testing is everywhere. Most colleges require either SAT or ACT scores when determining acceptance. Additionally, many public schools have their students take standardized tests to assess proficiency in certain areas. The aim of these test is to measure student achievement on a large scale. While the tests often fail to meet this requirement, the goal is to make the tests reliable and objective assessments of student ability. While this model may work in a perfect world, our world is far from perfect.

 

Students Talking a Standardized Test – Photo Credit

 

Firstly, let’s address the implications of the tests. Public schools throughout the United States receive funding from the federal, state, and local government. As you can imagine, this system can be quite complicated. For the purposes of this specific post the only necessary information is that many sources of funding take the requirements of grants or come with certain requirements. In most cases Public Schools need to take standardized testing to receive any funding at all. Furthermore, public schools need to meet certain benchmarks or show a certain level of improvement to receive funding from these sources. Yes, a sizable portion of funding boils down to the test scores of students. This idea can be painful when the teachers are limited in what they can do to make their pupils grasp the importance of the exam and succeed.

 

As usual, this aspect of the educational system can be viewed as broken in several ways. Aside from the fact that tests are used to decide funding, a prominent issue is the manner in which the schools with the higher scores receive more funding. This may seem fair in that the best schools should be awarded the most money. However, this logic breaks down when you view the schools in terms of need, meaning the schools that are testing poorly need more money due to their academic short-comings. They need more money in order to better their educational institution and teach more effectively. Of course there are failures in this logic too, but cutting the funding of schools that are failing doesn’t appear to be an effective solution either.

 

Parent Perceptions of Standardized Testing – Photo Credit

 

Again, the SAT and ACT are two of the most obvious examples of standardized test and for good reason. Just about every student applying to a post-secondary school will take one of the two at some point. Whether you like it or not, these tests play a major role in the application process. With the millions of students applying to colleges each year there needs to be some way to standardize application. A test is an excellent method for this and it is a good idea at hear. Yet, a single test score can never properly represent who a student or their potential. This leads many students to resent the practice, finding the implications of just one test to be too great.

 

SAT Test – Photo Credit

 

Building on this foundation are the many problems with the test. The exam is meant to predict first-year success of students in college, but many studies have found the tests to be inaccurate in some manner or another. Herman Aguinis, a lead researcher, has found that the SAT score both over and under predict the performance of students. This was not just a couple of cases, it was inaccurate nearly one fifth of the time.

 

Still, the more important issue is the test’s several biases . A New York Times article expressed that, “On average historically, whites and Asians do better than blacks and Hispanics on the SAT; wealthier children do better than poorer ones; and boys do better than girls — slightly better in verbal skills and considerably better in math.” Efforts have been made to reduce these biases in recent years, but they have persisted. Unfair questions were the root of the problem in the past, which primarily entailed topics that were more familiar to some students. The more recent efforts have lessened the gap, but it still exists. The testing companies claim that the root of the problem is not the test, but stereotypes and greater societal problems. Assuming this is the case, hopefully a true resolution can be found.

 

SAT Racial Bias – Photo Credit

 

It is more than likely that standardized tests are not going anywhere anytime soon. They will continue to a source of conclusions for the foreseeable future. For that reason, we must attempt to draw meaningful insights from them. We must avoid placing too much weight on them and assessing them in terms of our current social system.