Standardized testing is common throughout the many school systems in the United States. The usefulness and importance of said testing is something that is currently being debated about all over America. When the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act was passed in 2002, the amount of standardized testing dramatically increased . Some people believe that the testing is fair and a beneficial tool to gauge student’s academic ability, while others deduce that testing “narrows down curriculum” and is unfair to the students and teachers ("Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America?"). The attitude towards the practicality of having an abundance of standardized testing nation and state wide differs between teachers, students, parents
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Numerous sources believe that standardized tests aren’t fair because of how standardized they are, as most students don’t have the same resources and lessons others do. Meredith Broussard, an assistant professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, says that, “… standardized tests are not based on general knowledge.” She reports that poorer schools don’t have the money to put into new textbooks, especially ones by the creators of the standardized testing (Broussard). This makes those schools at a disadvantage, seemingly setting these kids, who have no other way to get the information, up to fail. The essay portion of the ACT has had some issues recently that could be similar to ones other standardized tests have. In James S. Murphy’s article “Let’s Ax the SAT Essay”, he writes that the ACT essay’s scores are unreliable because of the untrained graders and the large range of percentiles makes it difficult to figure out who is really good at what. Standardized testing can be unfair based on the grading, and unhelpful in predicting how well a student would do which is defeating the purpose of standardized testing (Murphy). Excessive use of this kind of testing is something that a lot of people seem to have an issue with. President Obama announced …show more content…
Class time is consumed by the preparation for standardized testing, which narrows down the time teachers have to teach other subjects. The U.S. Department of Education is proposing to only let test preparation take up 2% or less of class time (Layton). In addition to testing taking up an unreasonable amount of class time, teachers are under pressure to make sure their students perform well. The National Education Association (NEA) surveyed teachers about their personal views about standardized testing. Many of the surveyed teachers conveyed that they felt standardized testing had a negative impact on their classroom - and not just because of the class time taken up by it (Walker). Teachers can be judged by the scores of their students, which puts extra pressure on them. Most not only want their students to succeed, they want to keep their jobs which may be threatened by low performing students. Some of the public and varied professionals can find issues with standardized testing that make it seem less beneficial to schools and
Numerous sources believe that standardized tests aren’t fair because of how standardized they are, as most students don’t have the same resources and lessons others do. Meredith Broussard, an assistant professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, says that, “… standardized tests are not based on general knowledge.” She reports that poorer schools don’t have the money to put into new textbooks, especially ones by the creators of the standardized testing (Broussard). This makes those schools at a disadvantage, seemingly setting these kids, who have no other way to get the information, up to fail. The essay portion of the ACT has had some issues recently that could be similar to ones other standardized tests have. In James S. Murphy’s article “Let’s Ax the SAT Essay”, he writes that the ACT essay’s scores are unreliable because of the untrained graders and the large range of percentiles makes it difficult to figure out who is really good at what. Standardized testing can be unfair based on the grading, and unhelpful in predicting how well a student would do which is defeating the purpose of standardized testing (Murphy). Excessive use of this kind of testing is something that a lot of people seem to have an issue with. President Obama announced …show more content…
Class time is consumed by the preparation for standardized testing, which narrows down the time teachers have to teach other subjects. The U.S. Department of Education is proposing to only let test preparation take up 2% or less of class time (Layton). In addition to testing taking up an unreasonable amount of class time, teachers are under pressure to make sure their students perform well. The National Education Association (NEA) surveyed teachers about their personal views about standardized testing. Many of the surveyed teachers conveyed that they felt standardized testing had a negative impact on their classroom - and not just because of the class time taken up by it (Walker). Teachers can be judged by the scores of their students, which puts extra pressure on them. Most not only want their students to succeed, they want to keep their jobs which may be threatened by low performing students. Some of the public and varied professionals can find issues with standardized testing that make it seem less beneficial to schools and