Standardized Testing Flaws

A large issue with our educational system is standardized testing. Standardized tests are used to measure students academic achievement and gage teaching. While the intentions are good, the tests are flawed and often discriminate against students. Due to the weaknesses, standardized tests are an unreliable source of measuring student performance.
Standardized tests are not only used to measure student achievement. They are frequently used to gage how well teachers are teaching. These tests measure the amount of information being tested and the amount of information that isn’t learned or forgotten. Using test scores to reward and punish teachers and students encourages them to cheat the system for their own gain. For example, according to a
2011 ABC News article, a state report stated that more than 140 teachers and administrators from 44 public schools across Atlanta, Georgia were caught changing answers on standardized tests used to judge student performance and school rank. Although all the teachers and administrators involved were fired, the incident should have been eye opening to administrators across the country.
While their goal of standardized testing is to measure student achievement, they make no attempt to measure other qualities. They do not provide a complete measure of educational growth. Educational growth includes, but is not limited to, academic achievement. According to Gerald Bracey, standardized tests don’t even attempt to measure qualities like creativity, critical thinking, reliability, leadership, and many others. The failure to measure these qualities causes an immediate disadvantage for students pursuing careers in the arts. It also provides an unfair playing field among students. For example, a highly intelligent student may lack test-taking skills. These are factors that may affect test scores and aren’t taken into consideration.
Along with all others, students with disabilities are required to take standardized tests.
Many people believed this was a good thing because these students wouldn’t be forgotten. The issue is that students with severe disabilities have been forced to take standardized tests at their grade level, even if they aren’t capable of doing the work3. These tests have great psychological impacts on the students subjected to them. Experts have said that many students are devastated by their experiences and often leave demoralized and in tears. The fact that children with disabilities are forced to face these situations is unethical.
A huge drawback to standardized testing is the stress it causes among students. For example, according to Dawn Neely-Randall, who has been teaching for over 24 years in Ohio schools, states that implemented tests have required 5th graders to undergo almost 8 hours of testing in just one week. One of Neely-Randalls students couldn’t handle the stress and broke down in the middle of one of the tests. Many students, including Neely-Randalls 5th graders, consider standardized tests unnecessarily
stressful.
Standardized tests are viewed as beneficial because they allow a student's performance to be compared to students in other schools, other cities, and even across the country.
It is argued that these tests provide an insight as to which students are excelling and which are struggling. Although these sound like reasons to legitimize standardized tests, there are countless reasons as to why they are not. Standardized tests fail to measure qualities such as creativity and leadership skills and encourage students and teachers to cheat the system for their own benefit. They also discriminate against students with special needs and cause unnecessary stress in the school environment. These reasons all contribute to why standardized testing is an unreliable source of measuring student
performance.