Joshua+Welk+Research+Paper

=Research Paper=

Joshua Welk Nov. 5 th, 2010 ENG 103 Standardized Testing: Is It Worth It? I must admit, I've never really been a fan of tests of any sorts. They just seemed so... superfluous, but maybe that was just me... who knows? Anyways, though tests are usually never fun, I find that standardized tests are just an unnecessary pain in the side. I know that I'm not the only one out there that thinks they're not worth the time to force onto students. I'm not saying they're completely useless though, I mean, as Richard P. Phelps  says, “[when] u  sed validly and reliably... ...standardized tests provide decision-makers useful information that no other evaluation method can provide” (Phelps). Even with that though, I must stand by my thoughts that standardized tests are just not worth it in the end as “standardized testing may encourage students to memorize material instead of processing the information naturally, along with the ability to reason with the information” (Bachelor). I guess the main reason I'm even making an argument either way on this subject is because I'm going into an Education major, that or I just really don't like standardized tests, but lets just say it's because I'm going into an education major. I just feel that standardized tests, as reliable at getting data as they are, they just don't give us a look at the right kinds of information that we, as educators and as students need in order to better our education system. Throughout my time inside the education system as a student, I've noticed that many people are suffering from insufficient education standards, or in layman's terms, the education system has been dumbed down over the last few decades. Of course, this is a rather odd thing for me to say considering the one thing many higher ups are worried about is test scores. The problem is, the higher ups of the school districts are too concerned about test scores and not enough about the students themselves. As Alfie Kohn says in his paper, “t he result is that most of today's discourse about education has been reduced to a crude series of monosyllables: 'Test scores are too low. Make them go up” (Kohn). Of course, test scores and lower standards aside, standardized tests can show you what a student has memorized, but what it can't really show an educator is where the real problem lies. Is the problem with the student, or with the teacher, or is some other factor the cause of the low test score? When you get down to the bare facts of it, standardized tests provide little evidence as to why the test scores are low, if they are low that is. I've witnessed this first hand with my own school district. It seemed that the only thing the school board actually cared about anymore was some number on a test than the actual education the students are receiving. I may not be the smartest person around, but I will say that I noticed a great decline in the standards of education as the years went on and the test scores became more important. It didn't seem to matter that some students were falling through the cracks so to speak, but as I had said earlier all they seemed to care about were the test scores. To be completely honest, it was a horrible shame. But low test scores and lowered standards of education are not the only point of this paper. A big problem that I find with standardized tests is that they are tend to be only multiple choice, which is just an easy way out for test graders. They as mentioned earlier by Bachelor, these standardized tests encourage memorization instead of actual learning of the material that is covered on the tests. Memorization is used as a tactic by many students anymore. They memorize a set of facts and answers for a test, then forget what they memorized once the test is over, and repeat the process for the next test. Standardized tests seem only to help encourage this behavior that is, in all reality, very detrimental to the students themselves. This behavior has almost no benefit, if any benefit at all, to a student later in life. If the student doesn't learn how to actually learn something and retain it for future use, and I don't mean for just a few tests, they aren't going to be getting anywhere anytime soon. Standardized tests are proving to be more harmful to schools then they are helpful. They promote detrimental studying behavior and provide an “easy-out” for raising test scores in the school district. There is no good that can come out of these “standardized” tests. Really though, amongst the harm it does, there still is some good they bring. They allow us to know that people may not be ready to advance, even if we're not sure why they're not ready to advance. I've got to say though, it's not really much of a counter-balance to it's naturally detrimental effects. And another thing that is problematic concerning standardized tests is that they don't actually test “knowledge of history and society or reasoning skills” (Bachelor). All they do is throw out some multiple choice questions and give you a set time and tell you to start. That's really about all there is to a standardized “test” in most senses of the word, and if that's what it's come to, I have a deep set fear for what will become of “education” in this country. In my opinion, a specialized test for each subject would be better then an overall “standard” test for schools. To be completely honest, what people will learn in some subjects just can't be evaluated with a standardized test, and requires a specialized test, but of course, “the test scores must go up and stay up.” That in itself is a crying shame to the standard of education in this country. If you want to raise the standard of education, stop using standardized testing and make a specialized test for each subject, it may take a little while to make a true change for the better, and the test scores may go down some, but in the end, I believe that it will change the education system for the better and hopefully reverse the detrimental effects that these standardized tests have had the the education system. Overall, my central idea to this whole paper is that standardized tests, though they may be reliable at gather information in some ways, they don't offer enough of a benefit to make up for the constant and numerous downsides of standardized testing that arise. They just aren't a grand idea for use in our education system, and maybe if we get rid of them and start using specialized tests for each subject, then maybe, just maybe, we can fix the education system in this country and help the children that are being sent through it by knowing that we can actually tell if they are falling behind instead of just seeing that “the test scores are low”.

Works Cited Bachelor, Denessa. “Are These Tests Failing?” //Heartsandminds.org.// Hearts & Minds, 11 Apr. 2006. Web. 25 Oct. 2010. Kohn, Alfie. "The Case against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools." 2000. Web. 25 Oct. 2010. . Linden, Stephanie. //The Impact of Standardized Testing on Student Performance in the United States//. Thesis. Salve Regina University, 2007. Salve Regina University, 2007. Web. 25 Oct. 2010. Phelps, Richard P. //Nonpartisan Education Review//. Proc. of Role & Importance of Testing, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakesh, Morocco. 3 June 2008. Web. 01 Nov. 2010. .