Standardized Testing: All Guess and no Check “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Nelson Mandela’s words ring clear and true; the importance of education is obvious to all. That is exactly why it is such a highly contested issue in the contexts of politics, schools, and homes all across the nation. Only a few weeks ago, President Obama passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, a massive comprehensive education reform that serves to ensure a proper education for all. It revives many aspects of the No Child Left Behind policy, and has many great components... except for one. The continuation of standardized testing. Used to check student success against basic educational standards, standardized testing
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As James Popham from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development explains, the arduous quest to create a one-size-fits-all assessment, has ultimately disregarded many critical differences among students that only enforces cycles of disempowerment in the future. By placing students of low socioeconomic status and students of race in unfair contexts, all standardized tests do is disadvantage already disadvantaged groups. In fact, as the National Center for Fair and Open Testing reports in 2011, “Testing leads to standardized instruction that ignores individual differences, needs and cultural variations, such as through ‘scripted curricula’. One size fits few, and that one size takes as its norm white, middle to upper class experiences and cultural practices.” It is absolutely vital to acknowledge these critical differences, however all standardized tests do is ignore this. This ultimately creates an uneven playing field on two …show more content…
Gawthorp, previously cited, describes: “These supposedly objective tests were actually geared towards native-born Americans, from a specific social class and an anticipated base knowledge. Immigrant students were not expected to know this information, but were to be taught it in public schools.” Nativist influence and the idea of manipulating subjective test results into a seemingly objective norm, undermine the first assumption of standardized testing. However, this is by no means, intentional. These inequalities persist because many “do not understand the mechanisms that stack cards against so many children.” This problem came to light in the early 2000s as a result of a reading passage on tennis. The writers of the test framed the style of questioning towards the white middle class, assuming all students, including immigrants and minorities, had a basic understanding of tennis scoring systems and rules. Flaws like these highlight the massive influence of institutional racism in the words of standardized
As James Popham from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development explains, the arduous quest to create a one-size-fits-all assessment, has ultimately disregarded many critical differences among students that only enforces cycles of disempowerment in the future. By placing students of low socioeconomic status and students of race in unfair contexts, all standardized tests do is disadvantage already disadvantaged groups. In fact, as the National Center for Fair and Open Testing reports in 2011, “Testing leads to standardized instruction that ignores individual differences, needs and cultural variations, such as through ‘scripted curricula’. One size fits few, and that one size takes as its norm white, middle to upper class experiences and cultural practices.” It is absolutely vital to acknowledge these critical differences, however all standardized tests do is ignore this. This ultimately creates an uneven playing field on two …show more content…
Gawthorp, previously cited, describes: “These supposedly objective tests were actually geared towards native-born Americans, from a specific social class and an anticipated base knowledge. Immigrant students were not expected to know this information, but were to be taught it in public schools.” Nativist influence and the idea of manipulating subjective test results into a seemingly objective norm, undermine the first assumption of standardized testing. However, this is by no means, intentional. These inequalities persist because many “do not understand the mechanisms that stack cards against so many children.” This problem came to light in the early 2000s as a result of a reading passage on tennis. The writers of the test framed the style of questioning towards the white middle class, assuming all students, including immigrants and minorities, had a basic understanding of tennis scoring systems and rules. Flaws like these highlight the massive influence of institutional racism in the words of standardized