Standardized Testing Research Paper Example

While many people outside of the American education system believe that standardized tests are an accurate measurement of student learning, there are many facts and examples that provide a different perspective. According to Joseph Ganem (2018), who was able to write about the observations he has made while teaching at Loyola University of Maryland, the majority of standardized tests do not take into account talents outside memorization, knowledge retention, and the ability to recall information. By only acknowledging these “talents”, standardized tests do not seem to take into account knowledge or skills in leadership, character, or extracurricular activities. Besides not taking into account a person’s outside skills or talents, standardized testing does not take into account outside factors that may have an influence on an individual’s score. Though there are many outside influences that could play a part, like how an individual is taught and how that individual feels, those two seem to have the most influence. According to a textbook for college students who are learning to become teachers, those outside influences cause a student to be considered “at-risk”. Those at-risk students require extra attention so that they may receive better standardized test scores. The textbook claims that students who are at risk do not have the ability to perform to the best of their ability (Hall, Quinn, & Gollnick, 2019). Besides having students who are at risk, there are also inside influences that could have an impact on a student’s ability to perform. According to a current teacher, Doctor Speer (2022), standardized testing is known to cause something called testing anxiety, which is one of the many outside situations that influence scores on standardized tests. Depending on how bad this anxiety gets for individuals, it can affect how they perform on their tests. If one is able to interview a couple of teachers, it would not be hard to find one that has had a student who struggles with this anxiety. Speer, a current teacher who teaches science classes at various Indian Hills Community College locations, has commented on testing anxiety. Within the month of April 2022, she had a student who had a panic attack due to having to take a standardized test. The student reported to Speer that the breakdown was due to testing anxiety and requested to be relocated. Later, she was able to take the test, though her performance seemed lower than usual. Outside influences are extremely powerful when walking a delicate line of good and bad scores in the American education system.