Standardized Testing Strengths And Weaknesses

One of the biggest weaknesses in standardized tests measuring someone’s wisdom, is they only test over a limited amount of material rather than what someone excels or specializes in. Throughout the course of a child’s education, they acquire knowledge from various subjects. The core subjects that students are required to take are math, reading, English, math, and history. In addition to core subjects, students must select elective credits which are classes that can range from art to music to engineering. Most standardized tests focus on reading, math, and science which are only three of an endless number of subjects a student might excel in. Since standardized tests do not test students in areas in which they do best in, they do not give a
For example, some try to argue that standardized tests are a good way to measure a student’s progress. This is a misconception as students are not able to show their best work on these tests due to a variety of reasons (Gandy par 11). Students are not normally restrained on time until they take one of these tests and therefore some do not complete the tests because they do not work quick enough. They may have gained the information, but it may not have shown on the scores because of the rate at which they completed the tests. Moreover, America is the only economical country that still relies on standardized tests to provide feedback on student progress (“How Standardized” par 9). Other countries around the world rely on accumulative scores from their essays, activities, and projects. This is a much better way to measure someone’s knowledge, because they have the chance to express their own feelings rather than choosing from a multiple-choice question. In addition to being the only country who relies on these tests, there have been studies to prove that they not benefit students. A recent 9-year study showed that not only did standardized tests significantly harm students’ learning, there was only a little gain from taking them (“How Standardized” par 2). Another misconception people have of standardized tests is that they provide a sufficient result that helps determine someone’s grade level. This myth has been proven false many of times with studies using different varieties of students. For example, a study showed that there was no difference in academic performance from colleges who require an ACT or SAT versus ones who do not. In this study, there were 123,000 students who were tested within 33 colleges around the country (Jaschik par 1). Because of this study and those like it, many colleges are starting to rely on overall academic