...Avineet Nanjappa Fletcher English Language Arts 5th 2 March, 2016 Standardized Tests in a Better World It is March 31st and it is also STAAR day. Everyone has their study guides out, and there is free breakfast in the cafeteria. Your heart is pumping so hard you can feel it pulsing throughout your body. Students complain to their parents about having way too much studying to do. Parents across America have been complaining about their kids taking standardized tests. Teachers have been complaining about how standardized tests judge their teaching skills. Standardized tests should be abolished because it puts stress on school, and it wastes a lot of class time. Standardized tests have been around since the 1900s. In World War I, generals...
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...Standardized testing is a topic that everybody knows all too well because we all have had to experience some form of a standardized test. The two most common and popular of these tests are the ACT and the SAT. Depending in which region you live in, you will take one of those test during your educational career. But, does taking that test really decide how smart you actually are. Eleven years of schooling and one of those tests will decide what college you go to and what you will do for the rest of your life. People have all different types of talents and these test favor the people who are good at school but, what about the kids who are good musicians or good athletes? Why should a test decide how smart they are when the activities that those kids are exceeding in, aren’t on...
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...A Position Against Standardized Testing I am a mother of two elementary school age kids, Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) board member, and actively involved in my children’s education. I have often asked why there is so much emphasis on standardized tests. Growing up, we took standardized tests but there was no real preparation work or stress over the test. We didn’t even know until the week prior that we had testing coming up. Back then teachers taught and engaged their students in learning all subjects because they loved teaching. We learned not only what was minimally acceptable to pass a standardized test, but much more beyond the testing requirements. I am very interested about high stake standardized testing in our public school system because it seems my children’s curriculum is solely based on concepts they need to learn to pass their standardized test. Rather than teaching to our children who are eager to learn how to be higher-level thinkers, we seem to be teaching them to accept a minimal standard and simply learn how to pass a test. Today, I see our children being given pretests and benchmark tests to see how well they will do on the standardized test. I witness teachers under pressure to make sure they get the curriculum in prior to the test and students being drilled repeatedly for the standardized tests. Our children come home stressed and concerned because in some states, these tests can determine if you are from moving to the next grade level,...
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...Standardized testing has been a part of student life in America for more than 50 years now, and it’s no surprise that they’re more pressure-packed than ever before. The SAT and ACT are by far the most popular standardized tests today and have become one of the largest determining factors in the college-admissions process. The SAT, or the Scholastic Aptitude Test, came first, founded in 1926 by the College Board. The original test lasted 90 minutes and was made up of 315 questions that tested the students’ knowledge of vocabulary and basic math. By 1930 the test had grown into its now familiar form, with separate verbal and math tests. By the end of World War II, the test was accepted by enough universities that it became a standard rite of...
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...High-stakes standardized testing can be a blessing and a curse, but the issue we are prompted with is should it be required in every class at Monett High School. Both pro and con side of the argument propose evidence as to why their side is considered correct and should be put into action. In the case of Monett High School I find that standardized testing would cause grades to drop while the assignments given would be completed with soaring averages. With information pointing to the failure of these tests not fully assessing whether or not the student learned the topic at hand, the topic of whether the test is reliable based on student’s mental condition, and improving the faster knowledge of comprehension ability or other things alike. We...
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...fantastic guessers and get an amazing score. Does this truly measure the success that students can achieve in today's world with one simple test score that admits him/her into college or advance him/her to the next grade. Although multiple people believe standardized testing effectively measures student achievement, I believe that standardized tests can not measure how well a student will succeed at the next level in life. The main reason why standardized testing is emphasized in all the schools across the country is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. This act was made to revamp the Elementary and Secondary Act passed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. The NCLB act increases the role of the federal government in guaranteeing the quality of public education for all children in the United States. The major change in the schools that ct...
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...Standardized testing was drastically changed in The United States in 2002 when congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act. Standardized testing has now become a normal and crucial part of a child’s academic agenda in the United States. The big debate is whether or not standardized testing really increases educational achievement. One way to simply answer this is just by looking at the correlation of high achieving educational countries and the amount of standardized testing incorporated into their educational systems. Asian and European countries are among some of the highest academically successful countries in the world. What is one thing in common among these Asian and European countries-- their high use of standardized testing. Although the use of standardized testing can increase the chances of academic achievement it can also come with some negative attributes. With standardized testing you lose creativity and critical thought processing. Students are being trained to answer what they believe the creator of the test believes is the right answer not what the student actually believes to be the right answer. Students are also taught to believe that there is only one right answer and that answer is either A,B,C, or D. According to Ron Maggiano “The overemphasis on testing has...
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...Children are always considered as the future of the world. They are the priorities and need much care. On their way to success, education plays a vital role to lead them. However, it is controversial that whether standardized testing helps and improves the education. There are both social and personal reasons for the debate that the test may impact students’ confidence and narrow teachers’ instruction curriculum. To begin with, the standardized testing becomes a part of U.S. education since mid-1800s, and it becomes a debatable topic when president Bush first introduced the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002. The act aimed to create a standardized statewide-test for students to measure the achievements and ensure every student has met the standard. However, critics indicate that the act is hurting education by emphasizing standardized tests too much (Jost, 2010). Students and schools are unfairly labeled as underperforming while the government was not providing help to improve. Over ten...
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...Standardized Testing Defining an individual’s ability and a school’s worth because of standardized testing is nonsensical and erroneous. However, this is what goes on every year nation wide since the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law in 2001. The data has come in and it can be clearly read that standardized tests do not work. These tests are holding some children back and have let the United States slip behind in education compared to the rest of the world. The biggest counter argument being that standardized testing takes objectivity out of student results. Standardized tests are an antiquated idea that has hurt more than helped. The No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law 2001 by then President George W. Bush. The Act...
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...Standardized tests measure the knowledge and/or skills of a students. In the test there are many multiple choice and some short answer questions in math and science. In today's society, standardized testing has been a highly debated and well-argued subject among people. While some believe that standardized testing is necessary for cultural advancement, others believe that there is too much emphasis on the standardized test scores. Standardized testing has not improved student achievement, Studies show that standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance and they measure only a small portion of what makes education meaningful. In classrooms all over the nation, students take this standardized test, and teachers expect a positive result, but this is not one of those situations. Standardized testing has not been proven to improve student achievement in classrooms. An example for this is, the National Research Council report found no evidence that are test-based incentive programs are...
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... agrees standardized testing is best to measure a students “educational goals.” (Walberg 1) Truly, in the results of testing haven’t done this. “The scores don’t provide very much useful information for evaluating a student's achievement” (Harris “and others” 1) Scores from a standardized test don’t measure a student achievement. Schools now don’t care about a student’s achievement due to standardized tests. According to Phillip Harris, arguing that standardized test does a “poor job” with measuring student's achievement. In addition Richard Rothstein, an education economist stated ‘Measurement of student achievement is complex-too complex for social science presently available.’ (Harris “and others” 1) These methods include standardized testing. Rothstein statement was made in 1998. More than a decade later, there is no easier way to evaluate student achievement. The great amount of testing that happens in public schools makes the scores on test carry the weight and schools depend on the number. Reducing the...
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...was required by my high school, and it was a horrific, four hour long test that I was unfamiliar with. Standardized tests, like the ACT, should be highly revised, if not abolished, due to its inefficient measurement of skill, high levels of stress caused to the students, and its unfairness. Although there are many reasons as to why the ACT is not a reliable test, there are some good qualities it has. The main one is its objectivity: “they are given under nearly identical testing conditions, and are graded by a machine” (Bless). This gives the test some credibility, but in reality, the questions are quite unfair because “objectivity” is different for...
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...Standardized Testing Standardized testing should not be required for admission to college because it doesn't really tell you anything. Why make someone take the ACT, SAT, or any IQ test just to see if their smart enough for college, or to even get in that specific college. Some people don't do well with test taking so they get a bad score. All that really shows if your good at test taking or not. This is why standardized test should be abolished from college admissions. A standardized test is called such because everyone takes the same test with the same questions, so ones performance can be compared to everyones else, in order for a relative score to be obtained (Lurie, Karen. "Standardized Testing.”). The first SAT was published in 1926 and administered 8,040 people. Standardized tests serve to offer measure of aptitude. There are standardized test that can measure school progress, intelligence, memory, and behavior capabilities. Some standardized tests are given to a whole group of people at once, others are given individually. There are also...
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...In the United States, millions of students partake in what we call standardized testing. Standardized testing is an unfair test that is administered to students and they are scored in a consistent manner. These tests are designed in such a way that the questions and procedures for scoring are homogenously consistent and students are scored in a predetermined, yet standard manner. The performance of a student should not be shown through standardized testing because the results are inaccurate. Standardized tests puts a lot of pressure on educators, students and parents; producing anxiety and causing parents to allow their children to opt out of tests. Standardized tests should be boycotted as a whole in schools because it is an irrelevant and inaccurate way of testing. These tests hinder a student’s overall learning potential. “Teachers agreed that standardized tests are unfair and provides misleading results” (Map and Kennedy 130). The current use of standardized testing does not in fact help educate students with their learning. Too much time is spent testing when it could be spent...
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...Standardized tests are intended to measure a student’s intellectual capacity, yet do they truly do so? Do they accurately measure a student’s intelligence, or do they only show a person’s memory capacity? Standardized tests are an epidemic, overtaking the school curriculum, putting an indescribable pressure on the students to meet the expectations set by these tests. Standardized tests corrupt and destroy education, in the way that they target three subjects, deeming the others as ‘unimportant’ and useless. Therefore, standardized tests should be abolished from Texas, on account that they neglect supposedly ‘unimportant’ subjects and limit the horizon for learning. Standardized tests, such as the STAAR, focus on English, math, and science,...
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