Against Testing There are many reasons to oppose the use of standardized testing in our schools. Many of these reasons should be common sense to anyone who has spent time in education yet, for those who are less enlightened, the facts should speak for themselves. The United States has descended from viewing test first as a useful tool, than as a necessity. Also, requiring students to pass a test to receive a high school diploma will not improve the educational standards or academic achievement in our schools.
Here we are in the midst of sweeping change in education where our policy-makers have decided that in order to make our educational institutions a better place for learning, they would double the number of standardized tests. President George W. Bush said, “In America, no child should be left behind. Every child should be educated to his or her own full potential” (Grannan).
Guess the idea was that by adding more tests, children would get more excited about learning, be more motivated to succeed, and the United States would suddenly be filled with happy, intrinsically-motivated student of all ages.
In fact, various progressives argue that schools who have great results on these tests are probably places where little real learning is taking place. High-stakes standardized test increase the levels of fear and anxiety of young students. The leader of Pavusrol, Mickey Van Derwerker said, “Testing season is upon us, and a lot of kids are so nervous they’re throwing up” (Berliner).
The Essay on Will A Regular Exercise Program Improve The Grades Of A School Aged Children
Will a regular exercise program improve the grades of a school aged children? The modern school educates children with one objective in mind: their academic success. The aim of our study is to examine whether there is a relationship between physical activity and academic success, so the independent variable in our study will be physical activity, whereas the dependent variable will be academic ...
Around the world students are unable to sleep at night, acting out, exhausted from stress, and generally working themselves into emotional wrecks as a result of hype surrounding exams, and it is truly disgusting.
These are children, some as young as eight-years-old, being put in highly-stressful situations where their test performance may have extremely serious repercussions for their teachers, their parents, and the fate of their school. Standardized tests may discriminate against many of the best candidates. In the book, Teen Legal Rights, it says, “A California court recently ruled that too many black students were placed in special education classes after the results of an IQ test were used to place them.
On the basis of its finding, the court said that school’s tracking system was discriminatory, and therefore illegal” (Teen Legal Rights).
Test scores consistently under predict the grades of black student. It seems that test scores are less reliable predictors for black students. Or in other words, even more errors in prediction will be made for black than for white students. Thee are no academic studies that prove, or even suggest, that a high-stakes, standardized testing educational program improves learning, skill development or achievement for students.
