As another school year passes, students across the country dread the inevitable. Grueling hours of tedious packets, study guides and banal practice examinations clutter the desks of growing pupils. In the midst of the routine chaos, educators rush to prepare their children for the storm of tests that will soon head their way. Even with their best efforts, many students are left feeling unprepared and misread.
Standardized testing has been utilized in various school settings and institutes across the country for decades now. These tests are designed, administered and recorded in a consistent method in order to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of an individual student, as well as compare the performance of other students in a relative manner. Consisting of monotonous multiple choice and short answer questions, examinees are allotted a specific amount of time to answer as many questions as they possibly can. Despite the current skill level a student possesses, every single test taker is required to answer an identical set of inquiries. This analysis of knowledge, once thought to be an objective, nondiscriminatory way to gather valuable data not only about our nation’s children, but the school systems that inhabit it, just isn’t cutting it anymore. Notwithstanding the widespread scrutiny these assessments face, money is continually spent on these assessments, leaving many to questioning the morality and validity of standardized tests like PARCC and the SAT. How can all the significant abilities and aptitudes of an individual be carefully accounted for simply by answering a set of uniform questions? Created with hopeful intentions, Standardized tests are not accurate or reliable means of measuring one’s intelligence.
Students have been receiving grades for their hard work throughout the entirety of their school careers. Whether it was an ‘O’ for “Outstanding” in Elementary School or an ‘A’ in High School, a successful grade demonstrates mastery of a particular skill. Standardized test scores, however, do not account for all of these achievements. Data received from these types of examinations display the outcome of one test; only one moment of a student’s career. This is no secret, and in turn the education system has hastily adapted to the unforgiving nature of regulation. Teachers must devote innumerable classroom hours to prepping their pupils for standardized tests. Students are spending more time preparing to answer questions on these exams, rather than learning useful skills that will continue to benefit them as they further their schooling. This grade-conscious mindset is leading education down a narrow path; when did earning a grade become more important than actually learning? The daunting pressure to earn a nearly impeccable score peers down upon our students. A large number feel that even with the excessive hours of preparation, they cannot perform every single task asked of them on these unvarying assessments. Not only impacting the children, educators feel the same burden. The pressure to succeed and compete for the highest rank potentially sets schools and certain individuals up for failure. Schools in wealthier areas are better equipped to train students for these exams, therefore producing higher scores on such assessments. While institutions in poorer areas often provide the same, if not more hours of preparation for these exams, students who reside in these regions typically have inferior scores on standardized tests. They are unable to detect the correlation between the classroom and everyday life-children are taught to memorize information for an exam without it applying to real-world situations. This discourages students; these scores significantly decrease their motivation to push themselves. When students aren’t eager to learn, teachers aren’t eager to teach.
Despite the controversial debate regarding the validity of these exams, billions of dollars are cut from school’s budgets each year in order to continue implementing standardized testing. In turn, classrooms and schools around the country suffer. Lacking fundamental resources needed to educate students, these examinations require a hefty budget. Schools in deprived districts are forced to make tough decisions and essentially determine what their students can do without-ultimately hurting them. Senator Andrew Dinniman addresses this issue to the Secretary of Education, Pedro Rivera. “We’re punishing the very students who we don’t give the resources to by stamping failure on them and on their teachers and on their schools,” he says. Education Secretary Rivera claims these assessments are simply required, and they ensure that students are measuring up to their grade levels and staff are doing their jobs. If standardized testing is so beneficial, then why do we let an entire school year pass before we release the test results to students and their families? By not allowing students to see these scores, we are not giving them the opportunity to improve their skills or potentially increase their scores. If these exams weren’t so expensive, students could be given multiple chances to become proficient in a particular subject or skill. With more time and resources dedicated to learning beneficial skills, students will thrive in and outside of the classroom.
Along with the prevalent influence to receive a high score on standardized exams, great pressure is placed upon mentors. Different schools are ranked based upon the performance of their students, and many fear that if their school is ranked in an inferior positon, they will lose their jobs. To avoid being ranked in the lowest position, educators have begun to “teach the test”- essentially meaning teachers are wasting valuable classroom time preparing students for these exams. It is unfair to compare different schools scores on these exams; the examinees that create data used to rank schools is biased because every set of test takers differs from the next. Educators fear failure, and attempt to prepare their students for what they will see on exams, not for what they will see beyond the walls of the classroom. Test results are used to evaluate the efficiency of an educator, continuing to create bias within the education system. Standardized testing may be biased against particular clusters of people; studies have found that it conjures racism, further increasing the achievement gap for minorities. Stereotypes created by standardized testing blind children who fall into these minorities-they believe they cannot succeed or do as well as other students, and in turn do not work as hard to earn better scores.
Though standardized testing has been widely recognized for its ability to be an objective, unfiltered measure of what a student knows, it is not an accurate account of one’s intelligence. Every student thrives and struggles in different areas, and a set of uniform questions doesn’t display the experiences and understanding an individual possesses. The pressure placed upon students and teachers, as well as the excessive time and money spent on these assessments isn’t beneficial to our students-it is time to change the way in which we educate.