How Student Standardized Testing is Failing Students and Teachers Alike
Trust me, I’m not just saying this because I’m a senior
Testing is an important part of school life, if not an essential one. Through meticulous evaluation and reevaluation, and more reevaluations again, teachers and students alike learn where they stand, how they stand, and where they need to improve. Most tests are there to gauge student competence and ability — ranging from chemistry quizzes every other day to midterms and even the standardized MCAS and AP exams later on in the year. Most tests given to students are based locally and tiered to not only the students themselves, but also for the many other factors affecting student competence such as geography, family income, and proficiency in English. Other tests are standardized across the country and state and are based around where a student stands compared to the so-called national norm. However, these national and state-wide exams not only fail to take the more local factors into consideration, but also prove to be unnecessary, unhelpful, and even borderline harmful when used to gauge student competency.
Standardized testing, a major component of student life, is exactly what it sounds like — standardized. Tests like the MCAS and even the SAT are irrelevant and inaccurate representations of student ability. An A in math in one town could equate to a B- in another, and standardized testing doesn’t take that into account. The “norm” in student ability is different across the board, with some areas having higher and lower standards in different subjects, according to everything from average family income to ethnic integration (such as English language use) to even sexuality differences — and standardized tests attempt to set one bar across the country.
The United States is a diverse country; we can’t expect to set the bar for some 75 million students across the country with one 200 question test. Standardized tests are geared specifically for a selection of students that are in par with the “national norm” — however, this norm varies so much across the nation that it becomes virtually impossible to set that bar in the first place. So, when schools use standardized testing to compare their standings to the norm or to schools across the country, the question is less of “How well are we doing?”, and more of “What are we being compared against?”. In other words, standardized testing forces an objective approach to testing when in reality we need more of a subjective approach.
This naturally leads to the conclusion that these standardized tests don’t actually evaluate student competence, and indeed, that is the truth. The SAT score is one of the most important numbers students meet, only stopping short of the anxiety-inducing cumulative GPA. And indeed, this number, determined in just half a day, helps define not only your college but also possibly your career. However, scores from standardized tests aren’t only unnecessary, they’re also ineffective scorekeepers of student competence. Important scores like SATs and other standardized tests like the MCAS seem to be more dependent on where a student lives than anything else. A study on college-bound seniors found that average SAT scores increased linearly per an increase of $20,000 in family income. Research also shows that the SAT could be unfairly putting a bias on minority students. An analysis conducted by Top Education Degrees showed that not only do SAT scores vary across family socioeconomic status, but also vary according to ethnic background, putting students in the minority at a disadvantage. Not only that, but the SAT bell curve is also incredibly old. The creators of the SAT have not allowed time and population change the national norm; the SAT bell curve has stayed the same since 1926. These scores are consistently pointing towards the unavoidable fact that SATs don’t measure what they were made to assess — student competence in the subject matter.
Standardized testing is not only unnecessary and unhelpful, but even harmful in many ways. The nation spends big money on standardized tests — the money going into these tests had drastically increased after Bush’s No Child Left Behind plan in 2001, increasing by around 160% by 2008. Moreover, students spend countless arduous hours working to study for these exams that doesn’t say much about their proficiency in the material, but somehow allows their ability to be ranked nationally, while they spend weeks in advance to prepare for testing.
In the end, students aren’t the only ones held up to this unrealistic national standard. This can be a year-long headache for teachers as well. A survey done on about fifteen hundred teachers in the National Education Association found that nearly three-fourths of the teachers surveyed reported feeling a moderate to extreme pressure from school administration to improve student standardized test scores — and almost 45% of the teachers surveyed said that this emphasis on improving standardized test scores had a negative impact in their classroom. Around half of the teachers saying that they had to spend too much time “teaching to the test”, or having to teach material just to cover the material in the standardized test, instead of giving teachers the freedom to handle their classroom in the manner that would be suitable specifically for their students.
Standardized testing has proved to be unhelpful and unnecessary, and a hamper on student success that puts a hold around the teacher’s freedom to teach in a way suited to the class. Indeed, these national and statewide tests not only harm student competence but also give colleges a false representation of a student’s competence in the subject matter. In the end, however, schools can replace standardized testing with more efficient and effective evaluations. For example, more local, county-based standardized tests would be more suited to students’ norms around their area, and will be more representative of their competence. Students can be evaluated more on their year-long performance based on software-mediated learning, where their progress is kept in track throughout the year, or standardized testing scores could be evaluated through portfolio-based assessments. These allow students to present the parts they want to and avoid the unrealistic national bar set by standardized assessments. Ultimately, it really is a wonder how much importance is given to these numbers — but one thing is for sure; too much importance given to standardized testing is detrimental across the board, from students to their teachers.
