Democracy Morality and Spheres of Control

¶ … standardized, national testing is implemented for students in elementary schools and secondary schools, the United States government will be making a statement that American students will leave their elementary and secondary schools having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, history, and geography. In route to this, it will be shown that every school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our modern economy. One of the methods that the government has adopted with hopes of assistance in reaching these goals is to apply, nationally throughout the school system, standardized assessments of each student's progress, which can subsequently offer some statistical proof on how well plans of education reform have worked.

This is an important matter, cause although the intentions of using standardized testing seem to be for good reasons, major questions on it's consequences should be raised, particularly of what relevance is the ability to perform well on a standardized test to the ability to perform in subsequent, different situations? As William J. Bennett writes in an article on education and nationalized testing, "Without educated citizens, the popular government they founded, in James Madison's unforgettable phrase, is 'but a prologue to a farce or tragedy; or perhaps both.' Education in America was to be the 'best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments of public liberty.'" These are statements of insurance, saying that a good education now is a good defense any worldly, public infringing trouble we may confront in the future.

But is the standard testing of our youth an indicator of how prepared we individually and collectively are? Tests measure whatever ability is required to answer the questions on that particular test, and that numerous variables are involved in this process. Tests, however, regardless of what quality of abilities they describe, are used chiefly for the purpose of making statements about the future performance of the person taking the test. The ultimate test of a test, then, is its usefulness in predicting performance at some point in the future. Is it, as a predictor, limited in what it is that it projects and postulates? There are many types of standardized tests that forecast futures specific to the boundaries of that test -- ACT forecasts college performance, just as the national testing applied to younger students will make predictions stuck within the perimeter of the school environment and not necessarily the larger world, which is where the synthesis of many types of education, not just classroom education, play the most important roles.

Another problem in the perceived importance of this testing applies to those who create the assessments. This is not saying that "question 'a'" should've been asked instead of "question 'b'," but queries the decisions made on what abilities are most important in an almost infinite number of real life principle situations. From a theoretical point-of-view, what these evaluations are doing are grading the match-quality of two sets of variables -- those within the examinations, and those within the student taking the examinations. Again, these are limiting factors when the initial desire is to determine the person's abilities on a grander scale. And, unfortunately, if the students taking these tests score highly, the tests themselves show off as successful products, despite what it is they are assessing. If the test works, it is looked upon, by those who are viewing the results with greatest interest, as rating high on a scale of validity. However, if a student scores poorly on the test, it is then determined that the student is faulty and has a particular weakness in a particular area, instead of determining that the test itself might be what is faulty. For example, how precisely do any of the standardized tests predict, say, what level of creative output the person may have in a future of science or numbers? And many times it is the individual's performance in these more complex life instances in which most are, or should be, concerned in predicting.