Latasha Gandy On Standardized Testing

Some people believe that standardized testing in America has a very positive impact on a student’s education and performance, however, others believe that standardized testing causes “important but untested content to be eliminated from the curriculum” (Popham). In discussions of standardized testing, one controversial issue has been whether high-stakes testing improves or diminishes student learning in a classroom. On one side of the argument, Latasha Gandy argues that children “can and must take the tests so we know if they’re mastering the critical skills they are learning from great teachers and great classes, skills they’ll need to pursue the college and career of their dreams”. While, on the other hand, Robert Schaefer of the National …show more content…
This belief allows me to assume that Gandy values a certain objectivity to be in place in the education system, because she believes that children should have to meet those standards to succeed later in their education and later in their lives. Another part of Gandy’s statement shows that she believes that standardized testing portrays the “underlying racial inequity in our schools”, by showing school average academic performance and the differences between schools with higher numbers of low-income students, students of color, and white students or “good schools”. Standardized tests, Gandy thinks, show when a school is falling behind national standards due to the demographics of the student income averages and races. Gandy believes that standardized tests show the overall quality of a student’s education based on how standardized tests are created by multiple qualified educators who make these tests so that they will offer criteria in all subjects for other educators and parents to “see whether a child is at grade level and how he or …show more content…
In the way that Gandy values how standardized testing shows the inequity between schools and their education systems, I value the overall fairness and quality of schools and their portrayal of a child’s academic abilities. I believe that both Gandy and myself value fair testing throughout the education system, but we differ in how we define fairness in evaluation. Together, both Gandy and myself value equity in schools and in testing, however we differ in the ways that we believe that evaluation of students should be achieved. While I believe that standardized testing does not allow for fairness in the testing system, Gandy believes that report cards, grade point averages, and teacher feedback do not allow fairness in the evaluation system. This difference in opinion shows that both Gandy and myself value the opportunity for all students to achieve a quality education and we both believe that a fair evaluation of that education is a crucial part of predicting how that child will do later and life, and that this fair evaluation will allow the education system to improve their teaching methods in order to provide a valuable education to students