Is Standardized Testing Good or Bad?

Imagine it is the first week of school. A student loves all of his teachers and classes, but one thing is the whole reason why the whole class is so forlorn. Next period the students will be brooding because they are going to have their first test. This is the case in over 98,000 of the United States’s public schools(Infoplease).

Standardized testing has gotten out of hand, and it is the reason why so many kids come home crying after another tough day of graded work. Standardized testing makes students compete for grades, tests often don’t show smartness, and finally they cause way too much stress. To start off, standardized testing causes school to be much more competitive than it should be. Many parents want their kids to be successful, and this causes profuse kids to go to extreme measures just to get high scores on tests. For example, in 1900, a Harvard law student named William Thornton Parker Jr. died due to “abscess on the brain, a result of overstudy” Myriad less severe cases have als been reported. (The Prospect). This shows that there are even cases where studying too much can be harmful to your body. Another thing that is often associated with competitiveness is cheating. One ironic aspect of this is that usually smart kids are best at cheating on tests.

Even Harvard students were caught brazenly giving each other answers in a large cheating scandal(NY Times). This shows that anyone will do whatever it takes to pass a class, and this should not be the case in so many schools around the world. Next, many tests are not the best example of how smart a student is. Based on many cheating scandals, sometimes it takes more skill to cheat than to complete the actual test fairly. Also, tests often don’t require a student to think through problems; they are mostly based on thestudent’s ability to memorize. “The goal of standardized testing is not to find out how well you think through problems, or if you can express your opinions, or create a presentation, the goal is to find out what you were able to memorize.

“(Knight Errant). This is a frequent problem with many assessments worldwide. Even then, it is often found that people of high intelligence lack many skills that are needed to be prosperous at jobs and in life. “Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

” (Edward De Bono). This quote explains that often a person’s intelligence cannot just be defined by their academic skill. More importantly, a couple tests cannot account for a person’s high school degree, and that needs to stop. Lastly, tests often cause an extreme amount of stress. This not only makes testing itself aggravating, but it also makes daily life tougher as well.

“About three quarters of psychologists from the state’s (New Jersey) nearly 700 school districts said state tests are causing greater anxiety than local assessments, a survey released Friday by the state School Boards Association and the state Association of School Psychologists found”(Lohud). This means that it is sometimes better to have small, low pressure quizzes, instead of one huge assessment. Also, ranking students adds a lot to the pressure, especially when it impacts your high school diploma and what jobs you can apply for(Brain Connection). At first, standardized tests may seem like they are not a big deal, but when other factors are introduced, testing seems like a much more ominous force. To conclude, despite the efforts of many assiduous teachers, it is tough to make standardized testing effective.

It may seem as if testing is the only way to gauge one’s intelligence, but there are other possibilities. Abolishing standardized testing won’t be easy. Even so, some teachers propose “student portfolios” of work that show how a student is doing in class(Rethinking Schools). In the end, one thing is for sure. Standardized testing needs to cease because it makes school competitive, is not accurate in showing a student’s intelligence, and adds a lot of stress to a growing child’s life.

Standardized testing is immoral, and many students, parents, and educators concur. Works Cited Infoplease. Infoplease. Web. 17 Dec.

2016. “Edward De Bono Quotes.” BrainyQuote. Xplore. Web.

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2015. Web. 17 Dec. 2016. “Preview of Article:.” Rethinking Schools Online.

Web. 17 Dec. 2016. PErez-peNa, Richard, and Jess Bidgood. “Harvard Says 125 Students May Have Cheated on a Final Exam.

” The New York Times. The New York Times, 30 Aug. 2012. Web. 17 Dec. 2016.

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Web. 17 Dec. 2016. “Tests Stress = Problems For Students – Brain Connection.” Brain Connection. 29 Nov.

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