Standardized Testing
Standardized Testing
As defined by Smith (2010), standardized tests are a number of questions that have multiple choice answers. They are given to many students and are analysed using machines for quick grading. These tests are used to evaluate the students’ abilities against one another, analyse the ability of students before enrolling in higher institutions of learning, placement of students in programs according to their abilities and analyse the progress in various schools. The United States is the only economically advanced country that heavily relies on standardized tests as explored in the article “How Standardized Testing Damages Education”. Ironically, these students perform better in these tests when compared to other students in other countries where the education process is extensive requiring the students to write essays and formulate projects. Many parents and educators have criticized standardized test claiming that they do not correctly analyse the student’s capabilities and they think that this tests should be abolished all together. This paper seeks to discuss the negative impacts of standardized testing and the reasons why they should be eliminated by supporting the statement “standardized testing does not correctly analyse students’ capabilities”.
Standardized tests are either done on a computer or on paper. The test-taker is provided with a number of questions that have multiple choice answers. The only thing they have to do is read the questions and provide one of the choices provided as the answer. Sometimes the answers are straightforward and do not require the student to have a wide knowledge on the matter. For example, if the student is asked to name the year a certain event took place, the student could have the correct answer to the question which does not mean that the student fully understands the event. Standardized tests are not a good measure of educational performance or intelligence since the system is simplistic. The system can not determine whether student has an understanding of the broader picture (Smith, 2010)
Before looking at the negative implications, let us first look at the advantages of standardized testing so that we can understand why they are widely used as a measure of students’ abilities. As explored by Smith (2010) and Phelps (2004), they are cheap, easy to grade and the educator can analyse the progress of many individuals. For this reason, they have been successful in analysing the progress of students from several schools. Some critics as discussed by Phelps (2004) have various misconceptions about standardized testing. They claim that some of the students that are from a lower social status are not included in the tests. They also claim that the stakes of these tests are too high dooming many of the students to failure. This is however, untrue and the government is working diligently to make sure that this misconceptions are done away with by giving sufficient information on how the tests are done, their advantages and future plans meant to improve standardized testing.
As discussed in the article “How Standardized Testing Damages Education” and Kohn (2000), standardized tests seek to measure a narrow perspective of the syllabus and in a poor way. These tests can not be said to be accountable and the results produced are not reliable in providing the progress of students or gauging the capabilities of different students (Pollard, 2002). For this reason, most educators are resigning from their jobs because they do not want to be held responsible for the failure of these students in the future.
Standardized test in most cases do not engage students in critical thinking. As explored by Kohn (2000) and Pollard (2002) students are classified as “actively involved” if they answered questions to questions they were taught in school and “superficially involved” if they left out the hard parts, guessed a lot and copied all the answers. According to the article” How Standardized Testing Damages Education”, most educators concentrate on teaching what will be in the test and not the entire curriculum. While in the job market, these students are unable to solve problems that require critical thinking. It is therefore true to say that standardized tests are interrelated with a superficial and narrow approach to learning.
Conclusively, these tests should be eradicated or alternatively, improvements made to increase their reliability and accountability. In support of this paper’s thesis statement, students capabilities can not be measured by standardized tests hat are simplistic dealing with only a narrow scope of the school curriculum. These students are not trained to be critical thinkers and when they go to the job market, they are unable to take on major responsibilities that involve critical thinking and decision making. Complains have been forwarded to schools by potential employers in a bid to address this crisis to ensure that only professionals are produced after going through the learning process.
References
“How Standardized Testing Damages Education”. Fairtest. August 20, 2007.
Kohn, A. “Standardized Testing and Its Victims”. Education Week. September 27, 2000.
Phelps, R. (2005). Defending Standardized Testing. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Print.
Smith, E. “What are Standardized Tests?” Wise geek. October 8, 2010.
Pollard, J. (2002) “Measuring what Matters Least”. Washington, DC: World Prosperity Ltd.
