Standardized Testing Argumentative Essay

In the last ten years, standardized testing has dominated many topics on school education. A standardized test is any examination that's administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner. Standardized testing helps colleges and universities see one big method of testing from different places. It helps them see the overall scores of everyone from the same base of evaluation. Teachers tend to “teach to the test”. Richer school make the higher test scores which gives them more funding than the more poorer schools. Standardized testing only shows one day of the students’ lives rather than their whole year. Standardized testing shows a students’ problem solving abilities rather than their actual knowledge.
Teaching isn’t what it should
be. Teachers may need to completely skip over parts of their curriculum of teaching their students just because that certain topic is not on the test. Teacher have to narrow their curriculum because everyone pays so much close attention to the test, and that the students pass it, rather than making sure all of the students know all of the topics necessary for their future. The test would be too long. The tests can’t have everything on it that most students would know in the certain grade level. The tests have to be shortened because of the time it will take to complete such long tests. If the tests are too long the students would lose interest from the beginning. Most students will lose interest in the test and in school in general. Since students feel too pressured with most everything based off of the test, they feel very pressured to do well on it. Since they are so pressured they might not do as well as they should and tend not to do as well as they normally would.
Money goes to the wrong end of the spectrum. Most of the money from the government goes to the schools that need it the least. With standardized testing, the more “rich” schools normally get higher scores because they have more money to get better sources. While the more “poor” schools usually get the lower testing grades because they have the lesser of the amount of resources, but because they got lower scores they get less funding than those with the higher scores. The lesser funded schools are usually ones that need it. The schools that need to funding the most tend to be left out. The more poor schools get lower testing scores and in the end get the shorter end of the stick as far as funding goes. The richer schools get better scores because of the fact that they have more and better resources than the more schools. If the more poor schools had the same type of resources the richer schools had, their schools could be just as high. The tests should be based off of what a student knows.
Standardized testing shows a students’ problem solving abilities rather than their actual knowledge.
Every standardized test tries to use real world examples to help the student better understand what they’re looking for. There are many times when they will use certain examples that some students may have never used or heard of before which can only hurt them when they can’t ask for help to understand it. Students have learned what they didn’t understand in one of their other classes. While, other subjects that do not have a standardized tests get pushed back. For other classes that don’t have a standardized test, they aren’t criticized as much as they should be and are pushed back for test prep. With more focus on test prep, there is less focus on other important things. Standardized testing only measures rather than everything they do and how they learn. Rather than have something that shows the all around success of the students, it only shows certain areas of what the student does. The test is only one day and one subject out of everything a student does through a normal day or even a
year.
Standardized testing only shows one day of the students’ lives rather than their whole year. Standardized testing doesn’t show how or what the student did throughout their entire year. The test shows one day out of the whole year that is filled with stress. Most teachers are stressed as well. Testing makes the students as well as the teachers stressed with trying to make good enough scores to make the district happy. Especially, on the actual testing day, everyone is stressed out and tired. Everyone is stressed and trying to do well. With standardized testing putting a lot of pressure on schools, they end up in competition. Which puts the focus off of making sure individual students know how to understand what’s on the test, and putting it on trying to make your schools scores better than your rivals. Schools need to focus on the students and not trying to be better than a rival school, which in the end can actually end up making your scores better.
Teachers don’t teach everything that they should or as in depth because they are more worried about students getting good scores rather than making sure they are ready for their next grade level and life.
Since richer schools end up with more funding, the more poorer schools don’t have has many resources as they need to bring those test scores up. Other classes end up with the short end of the stick when it come to learning. Since they don’t have a standardized test, they end up putting off on those subjects so those subjects that do have tests can have more time to prepare for their tests. Standardized tests only show one day out of their entire school filled with stress rather than all the other days the students have
worked.
With schools, teachers, and even colleges putting more focus on how standardized testing will affect district ratings, not enough emphasis is placed on the students goals and achievements. This puts into question if they are retaining all they should be for life and their future. Students are unable to concentrate on their grades which create the eligibility for colleges because they focus too much on the fact that the standardized tests are the only hurdle between each grade level. A student can make great grades throughout the entire school year but fail one test and not graduate. There needs to be more structure when it comes to these types of tests. We need to balance the good and bad aspects to standardized testing, and find a way to incorporate the students and teachers needs to accomplish everyones goals.