Arguments Against Standardized Tests

It’s senior year September, the trees shed their leaves, the air clings to it’s indian summer humidity and students scrabble to take the ACTs and SATs. Some for the 4th or 5th or 6th time. While colleges use these exams to predict a student’s future level of success, the tests fail to assess the highschooler fairly. Standardized tests, by definition, are not, in fact, Standardized. To standardized a procedure is “to change (things) so that they are similar and consistent and agree with rules about what is proper and acceptable,” (Merriam-Webster). The exams students take in schools are not consistent and do not agree with the what society judges to be acceptable. The nature of the test itself does not allow for consistency. To be consistent, the action must be replicable; meaning students who score a 27 on the ACT the first time they take it, should score a 27 when they take the same assessment a month later. However this is not the case. Almost every Hudson graduate has taken the ACT numerous times, with a potently new score after each exam. Therefore, the results are not replicable, not consistent, not standardized. Even outside of Hudson, students’ ranks
After all, exams do help determine if children are learning. However, these tests, lacking standardization, may not be the most objective way to measure the success of a school system and its students. Other countries that rank ahead of the United States in education, like Finland, use techniques like teacher observation, and performance based assessments, (What’s Wrong With Standardized Testing). If school systems need to know whether a learning environment is successful, then measuring the classroom directly not only makes more sense, but can provide a way to bypass the inconsistencies of test taking. In the future, the United States school systems should wean away from “Standardized”