Imagine a third grade girl about to take her first standardized test. She is nervous about the test because it is not a normal classroom test. Over the past month, her teacher has reviewed everything that she and her classmates have learned the entire year. As she looks around the room, she observes other nervous peers. Unfortunately, standardized tests have grown more frequent in schools at all levels, and “when future educational historians look back at the last few decades of U.S. public schooling, they will surely identify a system in which students’ scores on annual accountability tests became, almost relentlessly, the prominent determiner of a school’s success” (Popham 45). Because people believe that schools do not educate students
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Better predictors than a grade point average, the scores from a standardized test that everyone takes show who is more ready for the next step, whether that includes the acceptance to the next grade level, college, or graduate school. (Kuncell 1081). If everyone takes the same test, no matter what school they attend, the score that a student obtains provides comparisons to other students who took the test. On the other hand, a person’s grade point average can be inflated, depending on what classes that person took and the difficulty of the classes; they simply do not represent an unbiased or consistent picture of a students’ academic performance. The course requirements also change from school to school, so everyone taking the same standardized test assists others, such as school administrators and college admissions counselors, to determine who is a better student, and who has more potential at the next phase in life. Based on these scores, standardized tests have three central …show more content…
This bias mainly originates from test questions themselves because some of the questions have a context that is understood only by a specific group of people. For example, if a problem on the SAT asked a question that had a context about pirouettes, some people, such as those unfamiliar with dance, might be confused by the question because they do not know what a pirouette is. They have not been given the opportunity to learn about pirouettes because there might not be a ballet school near them, they might not have enough money to attend one, or they do not have any interest in ballet itself. This question is unfair to these children who do not understand and are confused. They cannot answer these questions based on what they already know if they do not even know about it in the first place. Minority students cannot break the mold of scoring low on tests if they do not understand the context of questions that they are being asked, so they can only do as well as their experiences can take them (Gilmore 396, 397). Therefore, opportunity helps students score higher because of the bias. Gender also helps to decide the score. On the SAT in the years 1998 and 2000, the average gap between males and females on 117 math questions was roughly seven percent
Better predictors than a grade point average, the scores from a standardized test that everyone takes show who is more ready for the next step, whether that includes the acceptance to the next grade level, college, or graduate school. (Kuncell 1081). If everyone takes the same test, no matter what school they attend, the score that a student obtains provides comparisons to other students who took the test. On the other hand, a person’s grade point average can be inflated, depending on what classes that person took and the difficulty of the classes; they simply do not represent an unbiased or consistent picture of a students’ academic performance. The course requirements also change from school to school, so everyone taking the same standardized test assists others, such as school administrators and college admissions counselors, to determine who is a better student, and who has more potential at the next phase in life. Based on these scores, standardized tests have three central …show more content…
This bias mainly originates from test questions themselves because some of the questions have a context that is understood only by a specific group of people. For example, if a problem on the SAT asked a question that had a context about pirouettes, some people, such as those unfamiliar with dance, might be confused by the question because they do not know what a pirouette is. They have not been given the opportunity to learn about pirouettes because there might not be a ballet school near them, they might not have enough money to attend one, or they do not have any interest in ballet itself. This question is unfair to these children who do not understand and are confused. They cannot answer these questions based on what they already know if they do not even know about it in the first place. Minority students cannot break the mold of scoring low on tests if they do not understand the context of questions that they are being asked, so they can only do as well as their experiences can take them (Gilmore 396, 397). Therefore, opportunity helps students score higher because of the bias. Gender also helps to decide the score. On the SAT in the years 1998 and 2000, the average gap between males and females on 117 math questions was roughly seven percent