Standardized Testing is Not a True Measure of Intelligence

 

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Standardized Testing is Not a True Measure of Intelligence

Students are administered numerous tests throughout their academic career to make sure they are meeting state or federal standards. A standardized test is a test that the questions, allotted time, and how the tests are administered is the same for all students. That sounds like a very fair scenario except for the fact that standardized tests are a biased measure of students' academic abilities and intellect. 

The test is created by companies that profit from testing. It is because of the tests' inability to fairly measure all students' intelligence and academic achievements that drastically changing or abandoning standardized testing altogether would benefit both teachers and students as well as the educational system as a whole.

Introduction

Intelligence and knowledge cannot be graded on a generalized chart. When it comes to testing, what standard are we grading each student's results by? Each student has their own strong points. Standardized testing suppresses personal expression in the classroom. "High stake tests are asinine. In turn, valuable time in the classroom is used to teach the testing curriculum, and to practice for the test. Learning material for tests means that different, more educational material receives less focus. 

 

As a result, with so much focus on right or wrong answers and test scores, the creativeness of the student is lost. Instead, the student is forced to focus on a pushed agenda to gain the highest score for the school's reputation and funding. If the students' best interest is at heart, it seems like the focus should be on cultivating happy, intelligent students that are able to excel in their own strong points. This could help exercise personal growth in the field they are interested in so they can hone those skills to become happy contributors to the career they choose in the future, instead of just getting a good test score.

Test anxiety

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, everyone has certain strong points. For some, testing is not one of them. Many students suffer from test anxiety during high stake assessments. With testing, especially testing that is rigorously focused on in schools, comes extreme pressure. Even a straight A student can perform poorly on a test. How is one test an accurate representation of the student's academic knowledge? I for one have a fear of public speaking. This doesn't mean that I cannot speak adequately, it means that my fear interferes with my ability to communicate under certain circumstances. That is the same concept for students that have test anxiety.

An additional adverse part of standardized testing is that students will be punished by below average, school-wide test scores (Broussard). "The most damning truth about standardized test is that they are a better indicator of a students' zip code than a students' aptitude" (Hagopian, 315). According to information on this page , Philadelphia, which is one of the larger school districts in the nation, is devastatingly poor, with 79 percent of the student body qualifying for reduced-price lunch.

 

Unfortunately, fewer than half of students passed the 2013 PSSA (Broussard). The reason behind this is that Philadelphia couldn't afford to purchase books for their students. Since standardized testing isn't focused on general knowledge, the lack of books directly impacted the students' test scores. In hopes of turning these numbers around, Mayor Michael Nutter supplied the school with 200,000 books (Broussard). Regrettably, the common works of literary didn't increase their failing test scores. This is because standardized tests are built on particular information that you can only know and study if you have the textbook produced by the very companies (CTB McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson) that also make the tests (Broussard).

Conclusion

These companies are involved in all three aspects of writing study material, grading tests, and publishing the books the students must study to have any chance at passing the test. The direct impact is that if the tests are written by these companies, in correlation to the textbooks they must study, a district that cannot afford the books doesn't have a chance to produce passing grades on the standardized test . The real kicker here is that test scores result in the amount of money a school has access to. So for an already monetarily struggling school district, like that in Philadelphia, not having access to certain grants and funding due to low test scores is just another slap in the face. Higher performing schools can obtain certain funding based solely on test scores. Furthermore, after five years of failure to meet Annual Yearly Progress, a school can be closed indefinitely.

 

This could result in misplacing students and leaving many teachers without a job. It's not hard to make the connection of propaganda being forced on our students. Administering tests written by these three companies, which receive a profit from the books that must be studied to pass the test, directly illustrates the reason why schools focus on standardized testing so much. Without the high-test grades, they will lose funding and grants, ultimately forcing them to cut pay or jobs in their district. Should this be the focus, or should students' education take precedence over this conspiracy?

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