Essay on "Standardized Testing Issues"

Essay 5 pages (1551 words) Sources: 1+ Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Standardized Testing Issues

Standardized Tests: A Good Tool, but Not the Right Tool

With the implementation of No Child Left Behind, teachers and administrators across the United States have had to deal with the issue of standardized testing. Because of mandated testing for accountability and the high stakes that are often associated with these tests, some teachers and administrators have come out against standardized testing in schools as a way to insure that students meet standards. Issues that have been discussed in conjunction with the standardized tests include whether or not the tests are culturally and ethnically biased and whether or not the tests accurately assess the knowledge and understanding of standards. Other concerns regarding standardized testing have to do with the success of certain groups, such as special needs children. Through an explanation of how standardized tests are developed and used, it will become clear that standardized tests should not be used to assess whether or not students have met the standards. Instead, methods that combine standardized testing for administrative purposes and teacher-initiated testing for high-stakes purposes should be called upon in order to improve student learning and represent students and schools fairly.

Because standardized tests generally consist of multiple-choice questions, with the choice of an essay section, they are not always the best measure of a student's ability to synthesize information and create or understand knowledge. Take the SAT for example; developed out of a desire to standardize college admission exams, the SAT was designed by the College Board, which is made up of Ivy League school representatives. Although it was first administered in 1926, it has undergone two drastic revisions, the most recent of which occurred in 2005. The revisions attempted to solve the problem of bias in the test, which many first claimed was biased against women and children. More claims that the test was biased, containing questions that assumed a person had a certain cultural background, erupted in 2005, forcing the next change ("SAT (test)," 2009).

Like the SAT, other forms of standardized tests tend to be created by educational boards that include the questions that they do in order to address what they think the children should be learning -- the standards. Calling the tests "objective" often serves to pacify those who know little about the tests. However, it is really only the scoring part of the exam that can be called "objective," as the decisions about what questions should be asked and how those questions should be worded is done by humans ("What's Wrong With Standardized Tests," 2007, para. 2). Indeed, it is during the scoring portion of the test that it is most important for humans to be involved, interpreting answers that may be justifiable and checking for machine error. Questions are generally put together in multiple-choice format, which "reward [s] the ability to quickly answer superficial questions that do not require real thought. They do not measure the ability to think or create in any field," according to FairTest, an organization devoted to equality in testing ("What's Wrong With Standardized Tests," 2007, para. 1). FairTest also argues that these kinds of tests lead to a "narrowed" curriculum ("What's Wrong With Standardized Tests," 2007, para. 1). Thus, the formation of standardized tests is done not necessarily by educators, college professors, and psychologists who know what students actually need to learn at different levels. Furthermore, these tests are not created to treat students with different backgrounds equally. For this reason, they are not the best methods for assessing students' abilities and learning. The fact that the tests actually inspire a narrower curriculum suggest that they are impacting the educational world in a negative manner, requiring teachers to "dumb down" their curriculum for the test rather than creating an assessment method that could be used in conjunction with higher levels of testing.

The way standardized tests are implemented suggests another short falling that leads to their negatively impacting education. Those who have to take and re-take these examinations can recall that they have gotten different scores each time. According to FairTest, this is the result of several different variables. A person's current emotions, the testing situation, and the behavior of the person being tested are all relevant in calculating that person's score ("What's Wrong With Standardized Tests," 2007, para. 3). What this means is that standardized tests are not implemented in such a way that they can be considered fully reliable. If a student is forced to take a standardized tests when he or she is ill, going through a difficult time at home, or simply having trouble concentrating. This is one of the biggest problems with basing high-stakes on standardized tests; they not only refrain from testing whether or not a person can think critically, but they also assess too much the situations surrounding the test's implementation. Other issues with the test's implementation include school's behavior because of the test's high stakes. If a school knows that funding or autonomy will be assessed based on a standardized tests, as many do, they can encourage those who they think will perform poorly from taking the test, impacting the educational system negatively by refraining from giving everyone the same quality of education.

Thus, both the way in which standardized tests are developed and used can negatively impact the school environment in several ways. Using a standardized test to determine whether a student will move into the next grade or graduate can be problematic since such tests do not necessarily gauge the student's intelligence or ability to think critically, but instead measure a host of other factors unrelated to the testing situation, such as cultural background, emotional issues, or even physical health. Further, the tests can also negatively impact the educational system by encouraging teachers to narrow the curriculum or send poorly performing students away.

Because of this, standardized tests are dangerous, but that does not mean there is not a place for them. Indeed, they are dangerous when they are used, alone, to evaluate a school or a person's academic performance. According to the American Psychological Association (2001), "Tests, when used properly, are among the most sound and objective ways to measure student performance. But, when test results are used inappropriately or as a single measure of performance, they can have unintended adverse consequences" (para. 1). This implies that tests can be used in conjunction with other measures in order to gain an accurate picture of what students are learning and what they need to improve upon. By administering tests to a class, a teacher has the benefit of learning who has best grasped a subject and who has not. Those subjects that students seem to have trouble grasping can be revisited by teachers in an attempt to engage and enlighten all students. For teachers, then, the test is an invaluable resource in classroom planning. For a school as a whole, tests can also be quite affective measures of how well or poorly a group of students is performing. Tests on this kind of a level can be used to help school boards redirect curriculum. They can also be used on the state level to discuss the implementation of new standards. In addition, discussing such results with representatives from the higher education community can insure that students are being adequately prepared at the lower levels for their continuing education.

But basing a student's ability to advance to the next grade, a senior's ability to graduate, and a school's ability to remain in control of their own decisions on a standardized test is not a sound judgment. According to the APA (2001), this is because standardized tests provide only a "snapshot" of the student's life (para. 4). Throughout the year, he or she may have over or under achieved. Speaking to that student's teacher is an… READ MORE

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