Standardized Testing Vs Standardized Testing

A Bit of Change Here and There: An Improvement to the Traditional Standardized Testing There are a lot of students out there that may regret the amount of a certain type of education that has been given to them by their teachers. A few of those students face living with human disabilities like autism and dyslexia. They feel this way, because they say that they are stressed out when trying to remember or take in any information that was given to them in the classroom. In fact, the amount of stress increases whenever those students are given a standardized test. Marquis Grant, an instructor from Study.com, defines a standardized test as an assessment that is the same for all members of a particular group of students with the same questions
and answers that will be given in the same order, and will be scored and graded in the same manner (Grant, para. 2).
The staff of ETS describes that the purpose of these tests is to test a student’s knowledge on how much they remember from the classrooms of their school years (ETS, para: 2). However, depending on how severe a disability can be to them, a student may become more stressed-out of taking the standardized test than the average school student. And just before the situation can get worse for the student, there’s no way for the standardized test to be able to tell whether the student is struggling with that disability or not. Because of that reason, it’s about time that standardized testing gets replaced with something that produces less stress and can make the student much more relaxed when taking it. A lot of students can describe that the way the standardized tests are handed out makes it seem like the school staff don’t really care much about what they feel at this point. In addition, in Licking County School Districts, in terms of testing, the standardized test, as 16-year-old student and blogger Claire Klodell puts it, doesn’t really test on the student as a person (Klodell, para. 2). If the student were to have a disability that could affect the score they get on the test, there’s literally no way for people or even the test to find that out. To the students, the only purpose for this form of testing would be to pretty much stress out the brain and have the student struggle to remember all of what they have learned during their school years. Preparing a student for the future really involves helping the student go out into the world and say, “I am me, this is what I know, and this is what I can do for you.” A possible alternative to standardized testing is portfolio-based assessments.
As described by Bob Peterson and Monty Neill, these types of assessments include portfolio-based results which include all of the records, progress, and achievements the student has received during their school years. It also includes any records or comments kept by the student’s teacher and collections of the student’s work (Peterson, Neill, para. 1). But portfolio-based assessments don’t provide any information on why they may have gotten those scores and records. If the student seems to not do so well, the assessment leaves it at that, and doesn’t straighten out facts on what may be causing the student to do so poorly. So, these types of assessments, like standardized testing, have no method of finding out what the student could possible be facing during those past years. It’s just like a waste of collecting data of what the student has learned during their years in school as opposed to collecting data that could affect on how the student got those scores in the past years in
school.
A human being with a human disability like autism or dyslexia is just like an overworked computer. They can only do so much until eventually they give. If a student with a disability struggles too hard on completing a seemingly different tasks or test, they would usually get under a lot of stress and pain until they reach the point they just can’t do it anymore. Students like that would feel like they aren’t like normal people. They feel different and they may be looked at as freaks by those of the career field that the students may chose to go to. And the standardized tests just make it worse. As authors Megan Map and Kristin Kennedy have stated, standardized testing is just a waste of time and money as opposed to being a benefit to the student (Map, Kennedy, para. 1). It would need to be improved in order to make students with disabilities feel like their futures really matter as well. And that’s where I come in.
What I would like to propose is a version of the standardized test optimized for any student with human disabilities. The standardized test would be re-edited and revised specifically for the students who have any of those disabilities based on the conditions of those disabilities. It’ll be just like taken the standardized test without any adult supervision. The method on how this works is that before the student takes the standardized test, the student’s parents or guardians will write out a note to the staff who are soon about to give the standardized test regarding the disabilities the student has and what needs to be compensated with the standardized test in order to make it less stressful and harder for the student to take. Before testing day, changes and edits are made to the student’s copy of the original test based on the descriptions and compensations provided to them by the student’s parents or guardians. The student would then possible be able to take the test as normal, but much more effectively and with less stress. While I do believe that this is a fair compromise for the students with disabilities who are taking the standardized test, some may disagree on how the changes that may be made to the original standardized tests specifically for the student may work out.
Some people may disagree on how this will work for the student. They may question whether or not the information the parents or guardians mentions in the note to the staff is false information in order to make the testing easier for the student. They may also criticize the fact that the original test will be different just so that a student with a disability will be able to take it much more easily than the students without disabilities and the fact that the people who make changes to the test do not see what the student with a disability is seeing. In response to this, there are some things I should point out to make things seem a lot more clearer. First, the parents or guardians of the student are given a strict warning stating that any false information that is found given to the editors of the test in order to make the test a lot more easier for the student to do would mean an automatic failure of the test for the student and possible a fine of over $1,000. Next, changes will only be made to the test in order to only help the student compensate with the disabilities that they may have in order to take the test much more easily than they did before. And finally, I understand that I’m unable to look through the eyes of a student with a disability in order to understand what he or she is currently facing right now. That’s why in order to make effective edits to the tests that are based on a student’s disabilities, the student’s parents or guardians will point out the specific details on what they’ve heard that their child is facing, and they’ll point out any specific details based on edits that should be made to the test in order for the student to easily understand and read a lot better. While all edits made to the test are not going to affect the child in a good way in order to hopefully make them do better on the test, we always keep researching on common human disabilities and we improve majorly based on what we’ve researched and what we’ve heard from the student and their parents or guardians. While we don’t experience what the student experiences, we understand what it’s like with what the student is facing and we always do our best to make sure that the standardized test feels the right way for them.
Every student in the Licking County School District, especially those who have common human disabilities, has a fair chance of preparing themselves to go out into the world and become successful in the career field of their choice.
Standardized testing originally failed in order to hopefully help a student with a disability prepare for the future careers that they dreamed to have. But with edits to the original test that help compensate with the student’s problems that they’re facing, the student would then be able to take the test in a way that feels right to them. Those changes to the standardized test work for the student, because it helps them out with what they weren’t able to like an average student would and it makes the student feel like they can take this test. All they need is a little help with what they are facing. They make the student tell the world, “I’m not like a lot of people, but that’s okay. I can make it, and I will be
successful.”