What Are The Pros And Cons Of Being Standardized

“I succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled to resort to various stratagems”. As a slave education was restricted to Frederick Douglass but he found a way to overcome this obstacle and become a very well educated man. “Books to me, were powerful and transformational”. Books impacted Charles Blow by opening his eyes to show how books can educate people. Standardized tests have restricted people from experiencing real learning. Standardized tests are inaccurate, demanding, and unnecessary to put students along with teachers through, and in the end the only thing standardized tests do is draw away from meaningful and lasting education.
There are many problems with standardized testing, most of which
come from the fact that they are not helpful at all when determining student progress and success. Standardized tests are meant to show how students have progressed in their learning and to make sure that no student is falling behind. There are many factors that can sway a students’ score on a standardized test. A major influence may be famiy. Students may know when test days are a few weeks in advance but students can never predict a disaster happening in the family. “Students may arrive on tests days with any number of personal crises that prevent he from performing well” (Myers 12). Something bad such as an injury could always befall a family member or a friend. With this thought on a student’s mind as they take a standardized tests they may not perform as well as they could have. Students may not even care what happens on the test because they are too concerned with what is happening in their lives. Another factor that contributes to standardized tests being unreliable is the questions that are being asked on the test. “For challenging content, it may be difficult to write clear and simple standards, thereby making their operationalization for curriculum development and test construction problematic” (Sloane 14). Certain standards that are tested for are difficult to create questions for. As a result some of the questions may be overly wordy or to complicated for a test taker to understand. On the other hand some rather simple standards may be over complicated and completely misunderstood by a student taking the test due to the test creator’s word choice. There can also be a problem with the answer key that test administrators use. A test maker may have accidently marked c as the correct answer when the actual answer is e. There are so many problems and inaccuracies that can occur from using standardized tests. Another large problem with standardized tests is how it affects the students and teachers.
“The fixation on testing is putting undue stress on educators as well as students, and, in many instances, punishing schools and teachers” (Myers 12). Standardized tests have led to teachers having to teach to the test so that their students can understand how the questions are structured and how to better answer them. Having to teach to the test puts great pressure on teachers to make sure their students know all the material and how to best answer the questions that are given to them on standardized tests. There is also extreme pressure on the students to do well. “Falling short even by one point of what the state has established as a passing score could mean flunking a grade or attending summer school” (Scholars 1). This can lead to some students becoming extremely nervous and anxious. As a result of their anxiety students may struggle taking the test even if they know all of the information backwards and forwards. This can also result in the test scores being inaccurate because some students do not perform well under pressure. Students are also pressured while taking a standardized test. Many or most standardized tests have one or more sections that are timed. This can possibly result in students cracking under the pressure and missing the score that they wanted or needed by the smallest of
margins.
Due to the many problems and challenges that arise from taking standardized tests there should be an alternative option for students and teachers.
“Assessment should be customized to the student, not standardized to the system” (Nielsen 30). An option that would be fairly easy to enact as part of a replacement for standardized tests would be to have personal success plans for every student. This would be as simple as a student wanting to master a certain aspect of a subject in school like math, english, science, or social studies. It could also include more diverse objectives as well. These objectives could be achieved by having students take elective classes. For example in music class students could have the choice of a certain instrument they want to try and learn to play. If they enjoy playing that instrument they could get more advanced and better playing that instrument. There are other choices for tracking progress that students have made in school. Grading could be more focused on school work throughout the entire year. That way any teacher could see if one of their students are struggling on a given day or if the student does not comprehend certain parts of the material. A good choice for an alternative to standardized tests would be to grade more heavily on the homework that students are assigned. Students would be more apt to do their homework if it was more impactful to their grade. This could also lead to teachers assigning less homework and
grading heavily on the few things that they do assign or to grade homework slightly more and to still give around the same amount of homework to students. A different option to standardized tests that would help students greatly would be giving them real life work or projects based on what they want to do or based from a general job. “In real life, we’re assessed by how well we do, not by how well we fill in bubbles” (Nielsen 30). Introducing students to how a normal job will work will prepare them for the real world after they have finished their schooling and decided on a career path to follow. Giving students problems that might arise in a work place and having them figure out how to fix the said problem would help them be prepared in their work environment if a problem similar to the one they were faced with happened in the future at their jobs. Exposing students to this real world environment will help to make them more successful in their future endeavors which is much more helpful than taking a fill in the bubble test.
The only objective that standardized test accomplish is ruining real and helpful education for students. These tests are unhelpful to measuring students’ progress and are a waste of students’ and teachers’ time. The time, money, and effort that it takes to create, take, and then grade standardized tests is not worth the reward that students and teachers get. The “reward” for their troubles are test scores that are either unhelpful or inaccurate that can determine if that student passes a class or if they fail and have to retake the class. The sad truth is that standardized tests are almost completely useless as a tool to measure students’ progress. Standardized tests only deprive students of long lasting and memorable education that could be beneficial to their future practices in life. There needs to be different options and routes available to students and teachers to help further students’ education and to help them succeed in their goals in life.