Standardized Testing Is Not Good for Education.

¶ … Standardized Testing is not good for Education.

Standardized testing and standardized tests, when looked at for themselves are not bad things. When utilized to diagnose an issue or try to figure out if a student has learned what they have been taught then they do what they are supposed to. It is when standardized test results are utilized as the only factors to make choices regarding graduation or grade promotion, financial support, and ability tracking. In other words, when standardized tests become tests with very high stakes is when they become a problem (What's so bad about Standardized Testing, n.d.).

Despite their prejudices, imprecision, limited ability to gauge achievement or ability, and other flaws, schools use standardized tests to figure out if children are ready for school, track them into instructional groups; make a diagnosis of a learning disability, retardation and other handicaps; and make a decision whether to promote, retain in grade, or graduate a lot of students. Schools also use these tests to direct and control curriculum content and teaching methods (How Standardized Testing Damages Education, 2007).

No test is good enough to serve as the only or primary foundation for important educational decisions. Readiness tests, used to figure out if a child is ready for school, are very imprecise and support the use of overly academic, developmentally unsuitable primary schooling. Basically they are promoting schooling that is not appropriate to the child's emotional, social or intellectual development and to the dissimilarity in children's development. Screening tests for disabilities are frequently not sufficiently validated. It has not been proven that they are correctly measuring for disabilities. They also encourage a view of children as having shortfalls to be corrected, rather than having individual dissimilarities and strengths on which to build. While screening tests are hypothetically to be used to refer children for additional diagnosis, they frequently are used to place children in special programs. Tracking hurts slower students and typically does not help more advanced students. Retention in grade, or flunking or leaving a student back, is almost always academically and emotionally damaging, not helpful. Test content is a very poor foundation for setting the content of curriculum and teaching methods based on the test are themselves detrimental (How Standardized Testing Damages Education, 2007).

A lot of school systems hold their schools answerable when test scores do not constantly improve. They place an excessive amount of pressure on teachers to raise students' test scores. They are not only forced to raise student test scores, but to also raise the school average. Unfortunately, this can lead to fraudulence on the part of teachers and principals. They have no motive to include the scores of students with special needs and frequently try to find reasons why a student with special needs shouldn't even take the test. This does nothing but damage the students who need special help. It cannot be determine what kind of help they need if it is not known at what level they are currently performing (What's so bad about Standardized Testing, n.d.).