The Elimination of Standardized Testing in American Public Schools Essay Example

that a school receives, the construct of standardized testing not only puts a strain on the students, to learn the material to pass the test in order to be promoted to the next grade level, but to perform well enough, collectively, to keep their school open. This paradoxical hinging of a student’s education to their testing aptitudes ultimately robs the students of a legitimate education. Rather than focusing on nurturing students’ natural curiosities, the stress that standardized testing puts on students extinguishes their fire for learning.

“Teaching the test” becomes the main focus of educators, instead of teaching for comprehension and retainment. This cycle trains students that remembering information for a short term goal is sufficient enough to get them through school, but that will come back to bite them later when they are incompetent on the job or in college. Therefore, the culture that standardized testing has created amongst American students is setting them up for failure. The overall purpose of standardized testing is to evaluate what an individual student knows by comparing it to other students. Ideally, this method is feasible if each student possesses the same resources, abilities, and learning aptitudes. But that is not the case. Standardized testing does not account for the disadvantages that plague students with lower socio-economic statuses. These differences are exploited through this system when students fail to meet the benchmark and are punished for doing so, while the students who do meet the mark are raised up. Cheating by both students and testing administrators also undermines the intent and integrity of standardized tests. When the main goal of education is to coach students into passing standardized tests,

so that the school achieves their quotas, the act of truly teaching students becomes futile. The focus is no longer on actually educating students and producing productive and competent members of society, but rather on the money.

The window for which learning is significantly shortened, with mandatory benchmark tests that are performed periodically to assess the progression of students’ learning along the year, in preparation for the big test. Not only do all the supplemental tests subtract from the already small amount of daily class time, but it expedites the timeline under which students are allotted prepare for the tests, rather than learning at a normal and healthy pace. Standardized tests unfairly label students as under/over achieving, based purely on their performance on a single test, or culmination of tests. It is unfair and unrealistic to judge a students’ entire academic career based upon test scores. Many students that are proficient in presenting their knowledge in forms other than circling bubbles struggle unnecessarily with these tests. That tears down their confidence in their own intelligence and hinders them from discovering their best learning ability. Testing scores also affect how they will be perceived in the future by colleges or employers. This can really harm students that have skills and knowledge, but that are just not good test takers.

Standardized testing draws out the excitement of learning and puts students into creativity-restricting boxes that give them false hope of what learning should be like. Standardized tests also cheapen the quality of a students’ education by condensing an entire years’ worth of material into a four-hour test. This method remains as an inaccurate system that fails to reflect the

true knowledge, ability, and potential of a student. a test score is a simple assessment of that student’s abilities under those conditions, at that specific time, and is affected by a myriad of different factors which are virtually impossible to recreate. Standardized testing brings a one-size-fits-all approach and ignores the individuality of each student. This creates a false sense of reality for many students who are taught under the system that uses standardized testing to equate worth and knowledge, rather than judging individual skills and creativity.

In real life, collaboration with others, trial and error, and the utilization of outside resources are almost essential to be a productive worker. In conclusion, standardized testing is harmful to students in many ways. It stunts their intellectual growth, creates a harmful and misleading perception towards learning, and mislabels students. The United States should follow the methods of countries like Finland and South Korea who have consistently outperformed American students academically in math, reading, and science. In order to improve the quality of education for public school students in America, standardized testing should be completely abandoned in order to allow the individual aptitudes of students to flourish. Works Cited