Argumentative Essay: Standardized Testing Should Be Banned

📌Category: Education, Learning, Standardized testing
📌Words: 942
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 24 March 2022

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. “ ( Albert Einstein ) On May 17th, 1921 Thoms Edison gave Albert Einstein a standardized test; he failed it. Many wondered how one of the greatest minds ever failed a simple test ? Einstein claimed that he had no care for information he could find in a book. Over the last decade, standardized tests have become more and more popular around schools in America. A standardized test is a yearly test to measure students' growth from each section of the school year, beginning, middle and end. People in our society are now starting to realize these tests are giving us inaccurate results and not correlating to any amount of success in the real world. Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Disney; these are all incredible people and minds that changed the world forever but they did terrible on standardized exams. Standardized testing should be banned from all schools across America because it affects kids' curriculum poorly and is a false predictor of success later in life.

Standardized testing should be banned because it puts a lot of pressure on teachers, students, and parents. These tests also seem to affect students' curriculum since teachers feel the need to teach the test. Students and teachers are oftentimes very nervous and stressed when it comes to taking standardized tests because when a student does not do well or meet the “ state “ level score, it can cause the teacher and student to lose their dignity and be frowned upon. A study done by Swope and Miner (2006) showed that standardized testing can determine teaching and learning in a negative way that affects children. Standardized tests only test factual knowledge and no creative aspects of thinking and learning. The more schools use standardized tests, the more the curriculum becomes standardized. Even though teachers feel the need to “ teach the test “ for a feeling of security, many students still struggle to learn the material and end up trying to memorize it because they did not get the background information that they would get in a normal curriculum not based on tests.

Standardized tests have been proven to have no relation to success in the real world. Many people still think that their SAT and ACT scores will determine their future but many big names such as Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Walt Disney, and Ben Franklin have proven that incorrect. Also normative tests were not created by geniuses. They were created by mediocre individuals. Lewis Terman, one of the countries early proponents of standardized testing, was a racist. Edward Thorndike, another pioneer, specialized in rats and mazes. Is that the kind of thinking you want your child to have? Albert Einstein, like any other great thinker of our time or any other time, never created a standardized test (despite failing a lot of them). Pedantic scholars with Ph.Ds in educational testing or educational psychology frequently produce standardized tests. If you want your child or student to have that mindset, then go for it; Big names such as Google are no longer going to take grades and test scores into job candidates applications. They have made this decision due to lack of results correlating between test scores and success/performance on the job. I am almost positive that many other companies will follow in Googles path just because they have a great point and they are one of the biggest companies in the world. The national leaders of our countries K-12 school districts have voted on “ No Confidence “ in the GPA and Standardized testing as a strong determinant of childrens collegiate success. Only 6% of qualified officials state that SAT and ACT scores are the best predictors of success, and a small margin of 5% say that GPA is the best predictor. These pieces of evidence show that the best qualified officals in our country do not believe in the test predicting success, even companies are starting to realize how pointless these tests are. They need to be banned.

Many still think that these standardized test scores are good for children and are good predictors of long-term success. Whether you like it or not, the best method to hold schools accountable for their academic achievement is to use standardized exam data. Ohio, is putting in place a cutting-edge school accountability system. Along with traditional proficiency and college-admissions outcomes, the accountability metrics contain measurements referred to as "student growth" or "value-added" assessments. Also many parents would like to know how their student is doing in school compared to other children and even other schools children, these tests are able to show that. Even though these tests are able to give results on how well a school or a child is doing, these numbers are oftentimes very incorrect due to socioeconomic issues, fluctuations in test scores, lack of creativity in test formats, and more. Some ways we can replace standardized testing is to survey emotional and mental strength because it is proven that these non academic qualities are better predictors of ones success. We also could test more high-order thinking levels and problem solving abilities. Even though standardized tests are able to give results on a child or schools test scores, these test scores can oftentimes be wrong and not show a childs creativity or problem solving abilities.

While the other side of the argument presents a compelling argument, it is still clear that all standardized tests across America should be banned due to teaching memorization learning and it is a false predictor of student success. Based on the evidence mentioned above it is clear that these tests are false predictors of student success based on the people who have done terribly on them. These tests are also ruining these kids' academic experience because the teacher only teaches the test just so when their students do well, they do not lose their dignity. In light of this, parents, children, and teachers need to take a stand against standardized testing as a whole and ban it from all schools across America.

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