Standardized Testing In Texas

English 1301
April 23, 2013

Standardized Testing in Texas

The first standardized test was developed in France nearly 100 years ago by a psychologist named Alfred Binet. Binet’s test focused on language skills, judgment, comprehension, reasoning and memory, and was used to determine which students would succeed in regular classes and which needed special attention (Lefton). Binet’s test was successful in the Parisian school system and generated a lot of interest in America. An American psychologist named Lewis Terman translated Binet’s test into English and created the intelligence quotient (IQ) test which remains in use today. (“Lewis Terman and IQ”). Standardized tests have evolved over the years and are used to determine
the abilities and performance levels of students across the country. The original purpose of testing students was to determine how to better educate them and prepare them for life after secondary school. Over the past decade however many people have begun to question the motives behind the current system of standardized testing in America, specifically Texas. Is standardized testing still about the education and success of our children or has it become a vehicle used by politicians to further their own political agendas I believe the standardized testing systems currently used in Texas – STAAR and TAKS – have become political tools and are no longer primarily intended to benefit our children and society. This paper will put forth several arguments supporting this thesis with the intent to show that standardized testing has lost its primary effectiveness in response to pressure from politicians and their interest in staying in office. First, standardized testing precludes teachers from teaching to the full extent of their abilities and inhibits students from learning to the full extent of their abilities. Second, standardized testing reduces everyone to the lowest common denominator of student and damages our society and workforce by matriculating sub-par students with inferior educations. Third, standardized testing has become a political tool that is wielded with more emphasis on maintaining political office than on producing a well-educated populace. Standardized testing distracts teachers from teaching because it forces them to focus on a single test.
In doing so it hurts individual student’s education and it restricts the overall learning environment. Due to the pressure on teachers to prepare students for the STAAR or TAKS they may feel forced to “teach to the test.” Teachers may feel they are precluded from teaching their academic subjects outside of the narrow framework dictated by the standardized tests. Additionally, “teaching to the test” creates stress on both the teacher and the student to meet expected scores on the test. Sandy Kress, a Texas lawyer and former aide to President Bush aide, helped write the No Child Left Behind Act. Last week Kress stated in an interview “You’ve got drilling and benchmark testing every six weeks. Clearly, there’s a lot of over-testing in a lot of places. It’s just awful, and it draws really negative reactions from parents, teachers and communities. Tests weren’t intended to be treated that way” (“Bush, Obama focus on standardized testing leads to ‘opt-out’ parents’ movement”). Fortunately, recent actions in Texas have attempted to improve the testing environment by reducing the number of required tests each student must take. In March 2013 a bill was introduced in the Texas Senate to reduce the number of required annual standardized tests from 15 per student to five exams in core subjects (“Standardized Testing Reduced for Testing
Students”). Evaluating both teachers and students with a single test (or small batch of tests) inhibits teachers’ freedom to teach the full spectrum of their subjects and hinders students’ learning experience throughout the entire year. Academically gifted students are restrained from achieving their full potential because teachers themselves are restrained from teaching to those students’ full abilities. Conversely, students who require more attention from their teacher are frustrated when that extra attention is limited or unavailable. Many opponents believe test standardization ultimately creates biases against portions of the student population, possibly by virtue of the environment in which students live and attend or by virtue of the creators of the tests themselves (“Standardized Testing”). It is difficult to deny that the standardized testing debate has become a primary focus of aspiring political candidates as well as incumbent politicians. The argument cuts straight to parents’ desire to see their child labeled and recognized as academically successful. The aspiration itself is noble – as if to say, Let us raise our children as a whole to the best of all their combined abilities. Sadly, and realistically, this is merely wishful thinking. In a society as diverse as America the public education system has an incredibly difficult task – educate a massively disparate spectrum of children and matriculate them into society as productive and capable young adults. This simply isn’t possible if every student is educated in exactly the same manner and tested to exactly the same specifications. The national No Child Left Behind Act signed by President Bush in 2002 was intended to revolutionize the American public education system by mandating highly qualified teachers and providing federal funds to schools to help raise the achievement of their students. Due to many factors, including a lack of agreement between individual states, the Act has done nothing but create yet another bureaucratic mess that hinders our children from achieving all that they can. According to the National Center of Policy Analysis, “not enough children are engaged in useful learning… 40 percent to 60 percent of suburban, urban and rural students are not engaged with public school content. Individual students require different kinds of schools and curricula because of their particular learning styles, interests and abilities” (“Private School Choice: Options for Texas Children”). Proponents of standardized testing use a variety of arguments to support tests such as STAAR and TAKS.
They suggest that standardized testing holds teachers accountable for doing their jobs and for teaching their subjects within a common framework of guidelines. They argue that standardized testing normalizes comparison of students between districts. Similarly they believe that standardized testing creates an environment of objective evaluation of students’ abilities and reduces the subjectivity of individual teachers’ grading of their students. Finally, proponents suggest that standardized testing simplifies the collection of data that can be used to focus on districts that might require special needs-based attention due to socio-economic or other environmental
conditions. Obviously the standardized testing debate is important, heated, and vital to the future of our nation. The public education system must provide a base of dependable and qualified people who can enter college, technical programs, or the workforce with a sound education and framework for advancement. Proponents of standardized testing believe their system delivers that set of qualified people. Unfortunately, what standardized testing actually delivers is a homogeneous set of graduates who have been reduced to the least common denominator of their peers. Those who believe standardized testing is misplaced and misapplied in our current public education system want to see our children lifted to the best of their abilities. Opponents of standardized testing want to lift the lowest students to the level of their academically-superior peers and then to raise the entire group to a higher threshold. The current framework of standardized testing does not accomplish this improvement in any way.

Works Cited

“Bush, Obama focus on standardized testing leads to ‘opt-out’ parents’ movement.” Washington Post. 14 April 2013. Print.
Lefton, Lester A., Linda Brannon. Psychology. Boston: vango books, 2008. Print.
"Lewis Terman and IQ." Boundless.com. n.p., n.d. Web. 20 April 2013. Merrifield, John, Lewis Warne, Lloyd Bentsen IV, Courtney O’Sullivan, and Joe Barnett. “Private School Choice: Options for Texas Children. No. 345.” National Center for Policy Analysis. 28 February 2013. Print. “Standardized Testing.” Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 21 April 2013. Online database.
“Standardized Testing Reduced For Texas Students.” Associated Press. 19 March 2013. Print.