Standardized Testing Essay -- Standardized Testing Essays

Standardized Testing President Bush is promoting annual standardized testing for all students in grades three through eight in order to assess their academic achievements. This bill is currently being considered in Congress, and has garnered much support from individuals in the community. As of right now, fifteen states test students in those grades, and more than twenty have high school exit exams. Exit exams look only at the test score of a student, not at his or her academic achievements throughout High School, and in many cases, people are either over- or underrepresented by their test scores. This occurs partly because America does not currently have the capabilities of fairly scoring the increasing number of tests, even though the companies creating and scoring the tests enjoy a large profit. The number of companies creating these tests is pitifully small. Adding to the lack of validity of the scores of these tests is the fact that many students today are not native English speakers, and their capabilities could be grossly underestimated by these types of exams, and there is a strong racial bias involved in most major tests. But, the biggest and most troubling problem with standardized testing is how it affects the learning that takes place in the classroom. This leads to the question of just how standardized we want our schools to be. Standardized tests are nothing but hurtful, and America should make a move away from them, especially since they are expensive and ineffective. We cannot expect to solve the problems in our educational system this way. We want our children to leave school with knowledge and understanding that will allow them to be successful. That is not currently the case. ... ...l only be a loose assessment of the criteria and not of the school, students or teachers, it would not be a major crisis if the tests were not representative of the students’ knowledge. That is a far more acceptable option than one of watching capable students being denied diplomas or college educations due to exams that they did poorly on. It is not in America’s best interest to pass the proposal to require standardized testing at elementary school levels, or to force students to pass exit exams to earn their diplomas. If we wish for our children to be informed, educated, and ready to survive on their own in the real world, we need to give them the tools that will get them there. These tests are not accurate, and they are detrimental to the education of children. There should be no debate over how our representatives in Congress should vote on this bill.