Standardized Test

“I’m sitting here sweating and shaking, hoping I get a good score. I don’t know what to do.” I’m taking a standardized test.

“‘I don’t think enough people realize that behind every one of these test scores is a living breathing child who has dreams and aspiration,” Standardized tests have been used to evaluate students since the 1800’s. Studies show that tests provide misleading information and do not measure actual quality. The tests actually stress kids out. Many researchers believe teachers can learn many facts from standardized tests about student learning, but we must stop using the assessments because they don’t accurately measure all aspects of student learning and they cause unnecessary anxiety in students. According to education researcher Gregory J. Cizek,standardized testing produces anxiety in all students even the brightest students.

Most of the time students are under so much stress to get a good score on these tests that they even get jitters, especially among young students. Understanding the effects that test have on students is very important. Research shows that teachers stress that kids need to get such a good grade on these test that they get very stressed out and they try too hard. Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of students’ performance. They only measure a small portion of what makes education meaningful.

Standardized tests cannot measure creativity, motivation, endurance, empathy, self-awareness or the life skills students learn and use every day. They are only addressing a small piece of the puzzle not the whole learning experience. “‘ If we neglect creative students in school because of the structure of the testing movement…then they will become underachievers.” On the website standardized test Pros and Cons, The National Research Council states, “Despite using those for several decades, policy makers and educators do not yet know how to use test-based incentives to consistently generate positive effects on education”. Reports can find no evidence of test- based programs working. Taking test might make kids good test takers, but it doesn’t get them ready for what’s going to have to face in the real world.

Some teachers feel that standardized test help to figure out where students are academically and what their learning ability is. They think the tests have a lot of useful information. Some educators also think the tests could be a good thing because they focus on skills that students have learned over the school year. I personally think that these standardized tests should not be scored if teachers just want to see how much a student has grown. I think they should be used to only see where students are performing and what their learning ability, not to determine if they should move on to the next grade or graduate.

I think that the government should rethink standardized test. The government should think of a different way to measure skill. They don’t think about the stress that these test put on kids. Standardized test is not a good way measure all the aspects of learning