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- Higher Education
For and against standardized tests: Two student perspectives
- Samantha McIver and Joshua Palackal
A standardized test. (via Shutterstock)
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Debating the Value of Standardized Tests
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To the Editor:
Re “ Don’t Ditch Standardized Tests. Fix Them ,” by Jessica Grose (Opinion, nytimes.com, Jan. 17):
Ms. Grose is incorrect when she says, “Without standardized testing, we won’t know where to put the most resources.” I taught in half a dozen schools in two of our nation’s largest school districts, and in my current job training teachers, I’ve been in dozens more. It takes about five minutes in a school building to know if it needs more resources.
And yet, regardless of the ever-changing policy on standardized tests, the same schools across our nation suffer from underfunding year after year. The problem has never been that we don’t know where the gaps are. We simply remain unwilling to fund adequate schools for all our nation’s children.
There may be curricular and pedagogical arguments in favor of testing, but to claim that such tests will finally get us to apportion funds to the schools that need them most is belied by our history. We need to change our mind-set about how we fund schools, not the quality of our measuring sticks.
Jeremy Glazer Glassboro, N.J. The writer is an assistant professor of education at Rowan University.
Jessica Grose doesn’t mention a standardized testing organization that many school districts around the nation use. NWEA, Northwest Evaluation Association , is a nonprofit organization that provides standardized tests in reading, math, language usage and science. Teachers like me use these three times each school year.
Results are available immediately, and the two most relevant tests, reading and mathematics, take a total of about three hours to administer. The data these tests provide are fantastic. We use the results immediately to plan instruction.
In Colorado, the tests required by our state consume two full weeks of learning time, and results are not available until the following school year.
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IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
These two essays were written by students in Katherine Cohen’s 7th-grade English class at Greenberg Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia. The students were assigned the task of writing a persuasive letter.
Proponents argue that standardized tests have been deteriorating education in America, but extensive longitudinal studies and national surveys over the past year says otherwise. Standardized testing has been around since 1905 starting with the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test.
Proponents of standardized testing argue that it provides a consistent and objective measure of student achievement, allowing for fair comparisons between schools and districts. However, the reality is that standardized testing forces a one-size-fits-all approach to education, which does not account for the diverse needs and abilities of students.
Standardized testing, by definition, is any test containing the same questions that is administered to a vast group of people for the purpose of comparing different student’s test scores. This issue is important because it affects the entire academic community, positively and negatively.
General Purpose: To Persuade. Specific Purpose: To convince my audience that students should not be scrutinized under Standardized Testing. Proposition: Scrutinizing students under Standardized Testing has not worked and does not work. Organizational Pattern: Problem-Cause-Solution Order.
Standardized Testing Caroline Moorefield Overview Where it began Since 1969, the federal Department of Education has given the National Assessment of Educational Progress test to American students to monitor their educational achievement Where it began Act of 2001 Outcomes of the
680 Words | 3 Pages. Standardized testing has not improved education in America. Standardized tests have been issued in schools all across the nation for years now. Some people like them and some people don’t. They do not help the student learn more information than they would without the tests.
Serious innovation in standardized testing will be the best bet for future generations — and today we may have enough technology and frustration with the status quo to carry it through.