The Pros And Cons Of Standardized Testing

The United States’s education system has mandated exams that enables educators and government officials to evaluate students and schools performance level domestically and internationally. Standardized tests, sometimes known as high stake examination, measured students’ ability using a multiple choice answer format, which covers topics including math, English, and science. These tests gives an objective and a comprehensive outlook of students’ capability to recall information from their curriculum; however, it is not the only measure the education system could take to assess whether its student body is attaining information from courses that are taught in school. Students have different learning style and learn at different pace. Although,
The number of standardized tests that students need to take on an annual basis has grew and only increasing and expanding into lower grade levels. The way that educators and government official is regulating with standardized testing is creating not happier students, but students, younger as elementary, with lots of stress and pressure. The problem is not about the standardized test, itself (which is a whole other issue); the problem is where these tests are administer. Students as young as “Sydney Smoot, a 9-year-old fourth grader in Hernando County, Fla.,”(Strauss), not to mention other younger students around the United Stated are being ask to take Standardized tests. Administering standardized tests in middle school and high school is not as big of a deal, but it’s totally unreasonable to conduct assessments on elementary and younger students. These students are too young to be consider to take standardized tests, many of them don’t have the comprehensibility skill, and the control of their emotions. Therefore,
The score is what counts, scores are used by educators to evaluate students’ performance levels, by government officials to determine the grant amounts to give to schools and by colleges to determine acceptances. However, in the process to attain humble score range there are already lots of stress causing factors happening to the test takers. When you take a standardized test, it is never about your skill or quality, it is more about what kind of score can you achieve because the scores you attained could meant getting into a renown university or something unpleasant; which can inflicts stress on the body and your health depending of the score you received. Everyone wants to do their best on any tests, they would go to certain length and sometimes put themselves through rigorous measures by “paying for tutors”(Shelton) and test prep classes, all for the sake of getting good scores. Furthermore, many parents are contributing to the increase stress level of their children without even knowing it; simply by advising them to take standardized tests. It’s certainly not bad to advise kids to take standardized tests, but when the only thing parents could think of is that standardized is “will guarantee success and college acceptances” (Shelton); that is when they’re mistaken because it should not be