Standardized Testing In Boarding Schools

Standardized testing has been used for college admissions since 1900 when the College Entrance Examination Board was formed due to the worry that there was a lack of a standard curriculum in boarding schools in New England. The tests are designed to evaluate a student’s knowledge and readiness to attend college by testing in subjects like math, reading, and science. The test seemed to “provide an objective way of measuring the potential of students from high schools of wide-ranging quality.” (Should Standardized Tests […]) Many changes have been made to standardized tests over the years and they are still being used in the United States to this day by colleges everywhere to select students to accept into their programs on a large scale. Though …show more content…
Because of the small sample size, it is very hard to actually see the intelligence of the students. Students could have many great attributes that were missed by the test, causing them to possibly not be selected for the college of their choice. For some, standardized testing is problematic, as it is not able to show their true abilities and what they have to …show more content…
Standardized tests provide feedback for the students on what areas they excel and lack in. The author of the article states, “School reading and mathematics skills, for example, can be precisely specified and as a students learn the skills, they benefit from ongoing information tailored to their specific individual progress.” (Walberg) Because of this, students can study in the areas they need to in order to bring up their test grade. Though this may be true, as stated before the test grades are not able to accurately show the intelligence of the students. Even if the students study in that subject area to get a better grade, this does not help them to improve their critical thinking skills and is more of a form of memorization of questions and answers. Just because a student is able to score well in one small category in the test, or even all of the categories tested, this is still only a small portion of knowledge that is displayed, making the assumptions made from the tests