Thus, the best way to achieve educational improvement and student success is to pair the issue of standardized testing together with other teacher-based assessments. Standardized testing should remain a focus of the educational realm for administrative purposes, such as planning standards and curriculum. In order to determine whether a student is ready to advance, however, teachers should make recommendations to their administrations, citing evidence. By opening this recommendation process up for administrators, parents, and other concerned individuals to weigh-in, this will be the most accurate and most objective way to assess student success.
Thus, standardized tests can be a useful tool, but they are not the right tool for measuring high stakes. Instead, it is better to rely on the individuals who can assess a student's whole thinking process -- the teachers...
Combined with other methods of assessment, such as teacher-based assessment, standardized tests can be rather affective in determining the degree to which students are learning and providing target areas on which to focus.
References
American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and National Council on Measurement in Education (1999). Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.apa.org/pubinfo/testing.html
"SAT (test)." (2009). Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761588262/SAT.html
"What's Wrong With Standardized Tests?" (2007). Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.fairtest.org/whats-wrong-standardized-tests
