The Pros And Cons Of Standardized Testing

“Stop, put your pencil down and close your test booklet.” If you’ve ever taken a standardized test your likely very accustomed with this expression. Going to school our whole lives we are all very familiar with these tests and are likely to have taken a few. According to the LA Post from preschool to senior year a student takes on average 112 standardized tests. So maybe we are taking more than just a few of these tests. These tests are designated to judge a students “scholastic aptitude” or their potential success. These tests are even used to determine admissions to college. A college would be a lot less likely to want a student with a bad SAT or ACT right? If you don’t score well on these tests you must be unintelligent right? The ACT, SATs and standardized tests as a whole, although judge students readiness and test taking abilities, are an inaccurate way to to foretell student achievement. …show more content…
According to the (edglossary) a standardized test is “any form of test that (1) requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from common bank of questions, in the same way, and that (2) is scored in a “standard” or consistent manner, which makes it possible to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of students.” Generally we link this definition to large tests such as the ACT and SAT but many other tests fall under this category. Test makers create questions that cover an exorbitant amount of information as well as test a students critical thinking and test taking abilities. They aim to predict a students success after structured high school learning but these test simply cannot provide precise insight into student