Standardized Testing, a Plague on America
Standardized testing has been used in America since the mid-1800s but it was not until the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002 that the use of standardized testing shot through the roof. This act was made because in 2000 America had fallen to eighteenth in the world in math. Since the establishment of this act America has fallen to 31st in the world in math. Standardized testing takes time and funding away from teaching as well as narrowing the scope of the classes, which hurts the level of education that students are receiving. When a teacher has to devote a time to teaching specific topics that are only on tests they lose the time to teach other subjects. Standardized tests narrow the entire curriculum in many schools, often squeezing out subjects such as music art, foreign languages and social studies. This is an issue because these subjects are very important, just because they are not tested does not mean that they should be ignored. Only 340 million people speak English as their first language which out …show more content…
Standardized tests are considered to be reliable and objective measures of student achievement. However they fail to take into consideration the narrowed topic scope of the subject or how a multiple choice test allows a child to have at 25 percent chance at getting every question right. This means that a student does not need to be able to actually solve many problems, they just have to guess what answers are probably wrong. Multiple choice also prevents graders from gaining an understanding of a person’s writing abilities, many people have a good understanding of grammar but are atrocious writers, and if there is an essay question how harshly each essay reader grades will vary, giving students who have a more lenient grader score higher than someone who’s essay is graded by someone who is more
Standardized testing has been used in America since the mid-1800s but it was not until the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002 that the use of standardized testing shot through the roof. This act was made because in 2000 America had fallen to eighteenth in the world in math. Since the establishment of this act America has fallen to 31st in the world in math. Standardized testing takes time and funding away from teaching as well as narrowing the scope of the classes, which hurts the level of education that students are receiving. When a teacher has to devote a time to teaching specific topics that are only on tests they lose the time to teach other subjects. Standardized tests narrow the entire curriculum in many schools, often squeezing out subjects such as music art, foreign languages and social studies. This is an issue because these subjects are very important, just because they are not tested does not mean that they should be ignored. Only 340 million people speak English as their first language which out …show more content…
Standardized tests are considered to be reliable and objective measures of student achievement. However they fail to take into consideration the narrowed topic scope of the subject or how a multiple choice test allows a child to have at 25 percent chance at getting every question right. This means that a student does not need to be able to actually solve many problems, they just have to guess what answers are probably wrong. Multiple choice also prevents graders from gaining an understanding of a person’s writing abilities, many people have a good understanding of grammar but are atrocious writers, and if there is an essay question how harshly each essay reader grades will vary, giving students who have a more lenient grader score higher than someone who’s essay is graded by someone who is more