A standardized test is a test built for consistency where all test takers are required to answer the same questions and all answers are graded in the same way. Any student from their late elementary school years to the end of high school has taken a standardized test.
Overall, a student’s academic intelligence should not be determined just through standardized tests.
There are many problems with standardized tests that don’t completely display a student’s full academic abilities. Firstly, students know that they need to pass these tests for their future, so as a result, they will do anything they need to do to pass them. This includes cheating, and taking performance drugs. This doesn’t show a student’s full knowledge; instead, it shows how well a student can cheat. This also goes for teachers who will cheat to raise their salaries through good test scores from their students. Also, standardized tests don’t value diversity. Everyone who takes the same standardized tests is different. Some of them come from different cultural backgrounds and don’t exactly know too much English. These types of people will most likely fail these tests. The tests should be measured by how much growth the student displayed, instead of quizzing them on how much they know after a lot of knowledge has been crammed into their brain throughout less than a year. According to Jack Schneider the co-founder of MCIEA, “The current data used to measure student success, adds Schneider, closely correlates to race, income, and family educational attainment. It really only tells us about advantage and disadvantage outside school, not what schools are actually doing.” Schneider explains how the tests show how much access the students have to resources because of their income instead of how much the students are learning in school.
Some might say that standardized tests do display students’ academic value correctly. They believe this because the test claims to be non-biased since they ask the same questions to every student and they give them all the same amount of time. Although this might have been a good idea at first, this still doesn’t fix a countless number of other problems. What about students’ income and cultural diversity? What about other activities outside of academics that define a student more than their academic abilities? There are countless problems with standardized tests that need to be fixed.
The best way to fix this issue is to support new forms of testing that are arising. For example, there is something called a PBA. This test focuses on critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration and the application of knowledge to real-world situations. This test is important because it isn’t just a test, but one that displays issues that will occur in the future instead of pointless questions that won’t help a student learn what they need to know in the future.
Standardized tests are so important because they are supposed to show how smart a student is, which affects their future and what classes they can take. We can’t let students ruin their future or what classes they can take because of something that is biased and doesn’t show the true components of what students need to know in the future. All students deserve a fair chance at a test, which is why many tests need to change to give all students the opportunities they deserve.
