Educators put relentless pressure on students to show that they themselves are effective. A student’s success is based upon their performances on standardized testing. A high score on a test shows the effectiveness of that particular schools staff success. Education is being measure by the wrong standard; therefore these evaluations are apt to be inaccurate.
A standardized test is an examination that predicts how well a student is likely to preform in an educational setting. An example of a standardized test would be the ACT and SAT, both of which give an estimate on how well a student will preform in college. These continue to be a strong representation of schools effectiveness. It …show more content…
The trouble faced with this is that what is being instructed may not line up with what items are chosen to be on the standardized test. Obviously items put on the test will not always line up, so how can a student be wrong on a subject that they were never taught. A study done in Michigan State 1983 by Freeman and his colleagues selected nationally standardized achievement tests and studied the content within a particular age group. They also studied a select few textbooks containing the information within these subjects. They had come to the conclusion that between 50 and 80 percent of the information measured on the tests was not addressed in the textbooks. The same could be said that a topic taught in the educational setting may not be found on a standardized …show more content…
There always tends to be a significant difference between what is taught and what students are tested on. It would be illogical to group individuals when not one individual was born with the same intellectual abilities as another. Some kids are luckier than others and concepts come to them easy, whereas some individuals have to study and prepare themselves for days. If everyone came into this world having the same abilities things would be quite simple. Some educators focus on standardized testing and only those concepts alone to prepare their students, while others try and cover pieces of every topic. Every way you look at every student is retaining a different piece of information.
An article written on The Hechinger Report, by Sarah Garland explains how these tests may measure certain aspects of a student but it does not measure an individual’s critical thinking or creativity. The tests give a small score grading an individual on who they are, when they give no information about the child at all. Schools are said to be spending too much time on prepping students for mediocre and unreliable