Shayleen O’Hayre
How has standardized tests effected my education?
The sound of my alarm on early Saturday morning automatically puts me into a bad mood. I have that horrible feeling of knowing that in a short time I will be spending the next 3 hours sitting in a small room filled with people that I don’t know. This is the perfect way I wanted to spend my Saturday morning, sitting next to an innocent girl who probably crammed for weeks, and on the other side I have a kid who most likely doesn’t even know why he is here. I hated having to sit down in this small room with plain white walls, not even a single picture around me to even brighten up the fact that I have to sit there for hours. Everything seems to be going fine you hear an occasional sound of someone’s stomach growling, until suddenly that question and room I was in all turned dark. The stress and small quickly got to me, before I knew it was lying on the ground. I had simply passed out and fell out of my chair onto the ground. Lesson learned when you have a concussion from soccer the stress of an ACT probably isn’t a good idea. So I may not have been the goodie goodie or the weird kid, but now I was going to be the one kid who couldn’t handle the pressure and passed out.
The use of standardized testing in the United States is a 20th-century in World War I and the Army Alpha and Beta tests developed by Robert Yerkes and colleagues. In the United States, the need for the federal government to make meaningful comparisons across a locally controlled public education system has also contributed to the debate about standardized testing, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 that required standardized testing in public schools.
I always had the same question in my head every time I sat down for a standardized test, why do we need to take them? I mean when you think about it if we didn’t have them what would happen? I feel that society would in most cases still look the same as it does now when we are taking them. There will still be discoveries and great works of art, a simple test isn’t going to change any of that. If you can imagine what it would be like to get into a college or get a job if it was based only on physical appearance or if you cheated your way through high school to get those grades. Many tests show that those who have done well in high school will show those same skills on the test. Also those who never worked for their grades will make it clear when they are not able to do well. Even with that can you really tell how smart a person is with one test? Using a well-designed test, such as true/false or multiple choice will all be graded the same why no matter who looks at them. This is the main reason that the format is this way, in no case can someone change the format it will always be the same. Standardized tests shouldn’t have more to do with where I go to school than my entire academic career.
Growing up standardized tests where just something that would be given every year for an entire day, never did any of the students think that it was something of importance. And to the teachers it was a free day to not have to work on lesson or worry about loud kids. This was going to be a class room filled with a bunch of quiet little kids, its every teachers perfect dream day. All they had to do was hand a piece of paper to us and all we did was just simply color in a bubble. These tests were simply given to tell how smart we were. Can you really tell how smart a second grader is by handing them a test, I mean all they care about is the fact that they don’t have to listen to their teacher and that they get to color in little bubbles.
While studying to be a teacher, it was starting to become clearer to me as if a test was a good way to tell how smart my students were. I mean when I was taking the tests growing up it was easy to me to just want to make a picture or something of that sort because to us it didn’t matter. We may have been able to color in those bubbles and pictures when we were younger but as each year went on the test became more of an importance. Those simple little bubbles were about to determine my future. The schools we were going to and the places we would be at. It was no longer a little game, I had to take it seriously, and I was basing my futures on one test. Now if you told me as a second grader that this test would later determine my life it would be easy to just throw a fit and not take it. I don’t think that will work for my now.
I grew up in a good family orientated house; I had a bed time story that I heard every night before bed. I wasn’t able to watch or read things that were bad for me. These rules didn’t seem to have any care to me at the time. Could how I grew up really determine how I would do on a test. In a study it was shown that those who grew up reading and learning things each day even if it was how to say apple or spell dog would do better on a standardized test then those who grew up in a rundown town with parents who never sat down to read a book with them. I learned something new each day growing up and somehow those little things that I learned would help me get into college. In a big picture it doesn’t seem to make sense, can the way I grew up really change how my testing was? Being in college with people who I didn’t know their backgrounds it is clear that, the way we grew up really does have an impact on my testing.
Standardized testing is big business. Every year Americans spend millions on the tests they are required to write in order to be evaluated for admission into undergraduate and graduate programs, and many millions more are spent on coaching schools in an attempt to raise scores. The testing companies, especially ETS, play a major role as gatekeepers to American higher education. (Chris Carter) If we are always complaining about spending money on things, than why do we feel that we should pay money to see how smart we are.
The first big standardized test I took was going to decide if I was talented enough to get into a prep school, and more so decide what classes I would be in. Was it really far that a simple test was going to decide what I did? “The SSAT and the ISEE are the two most commonly used standardized admissions tests used in American private schools”.( Robert Kennedy) To me it didn’t seem so fair, how could this one little piece of paper tell a school of teachers how smart I was or wasn’t? Weren’t my teachers keeping track of my grades for a reason, or was that just something they did for fun. I worked hard for those grades because I thought that they mattered. If they were that important, than why was a simple test determining my future?
As years went on and more test were given I slowly started to understand, that was until it came time for the most popular tests the SAT and ACT. Standardized testing is big business. Every year Americans spend millions on the tests they are required to write in order to be evaluated for admission into undergraduate and graduate programs, and many millions more are spent on coaching schools in an attempt to raise scores. The testing companies, especially ETS, play a major role as gatekeepers to American higher education. (Chris Carter)
“The observation has been made that boys surpass girls on standardized tests. But the ACT gender gap has narrowed.”( Michelle Slatalla) Boys from the class of 2007 scored 21.2 on averages, with girls just behind at 21. So now I am being told that my gender has something to do with my testing.
These two tests were really going to determine the types of places that I would be able to get into. Most commonly depending on if you were going to the west or east would tell you what test you would need to take. Going to the west most of the colleges would expect you to take the ACT were as going to the east you would take the SAT. Why did there seem to be a difference as of what test needed to be taken depending on what coast you were in. In the last five years, the number of ACT takers on the East Coast has risen 66 percent, and on the West Coast 46 percent, according to ACT Inc. (Michelle Slatalla)
Colleges looked at each test as if that was the most important thing, was a 3 hour test really going to be able to determine the colleges I got into? What was the point of four years of schooling if in the end it would come down to a test to describe how smart I was?
Although testing may be stressful for some students, testing is a normal and expected way of assessing what students have learned. The purpose of state assessments required under No Child Left Behind is to provide an independent insight into each child's progress, as well as each school's. This information is essential for parents, schools, districts and states in their efforts to ensure that no child--regardless of race, ethnic group, gender or family income--is trapped in a consistently low-performing school. (ED.Gov)
Teachers work towards helping students understand the information and that is why they give tests in a class room. Their main focus is to make sure that what is being taught in the class room is being understood before sending them on the next grade or so. A plan test on the other terms doesn’t really matter if you understand the information at all it is more based on just the score. You are supposed to take all the information that you have learned in your classes and then apply that to one test.
When taking a test in high school if you were unsure with the information or didn’t understand it you were able to go back to the teacher and they would help you to figure the rest out. After taking the standardized tests there is no way of figuring out what you need to work on exactly. It may tell you that your math was high or that science was low, but that won’t help you to understand the importance of what you missed. That doesn’t seem very fair to anyone involved with it. When I become a teacher I want to be able to look at my students and know that what they have learned will help them succeed in the academic journey. My way of looking at is you can’t sit down a student and expect that a three hour test will be able to decide either if they are going to one college or another. 12 years of schooling and those grades should speak mainly for themselves.
Works Cited
Carter, Chris. "The Case Against Standardized." The Case Against Standardized Tests. Web. 5 Apr. 2012. <http://testcritic.homestead.com/files/standardized_tests.html>.
"GHEA - Georgia Gome Education Association." GHEA. 5 Jan. 2009. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <http://www.ghea.org/pages/testing/standardizedTests.php>.
Henningfeld, Diane Andrews. Standardized Testing. Detroit: Greenhaven/Thomson Gale, 2008. Print
Kenndy, Robert. "Private Schools." About.com. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <http://privateschool.about.com
Rocchio, Joseph. "Do We Need Standardized Tests?" GET SMART ABOUT TESTS. 1999. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <http://rocklinpub.com/doweneedstandardizedtests.html>.
"Sat Scores Mirror National Trend." 25 Aug. 2009. Web. 12 Apr. 2012. <http://www.ncpublicschools.org/newsroom>.
Slatala, Michelle. "ACT vs. SAT." The New York times. 4 Nov. 2010. Web. 10 Apr. 2012.<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/education/edlife/guidance.html?pagewanted=all>.
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