Dane Kaldahl
English 104
Toby Veeder
April 12, 2011
Standardized Testing: Living up to our Expectations
Have you ever been sitting in a classroom and found yourself thinking “what is the point of this?” Among teenagers in today’s society this is probably one of the most frequently asked questions in education. America makes education mandatory at least until the age of seventeen. During the course of that education span all children in the United States are required to take standardized tests. Standardized testing is a system used to measure the amount of knowledge that a student of a specific age has obtained. Note the key word, standard. Standard is a level of expectations that the federal government has for students today. There are certain areas of education that the government thinks all students should be reaching at certain ages, this is the purpose of standardized testing. Even though it has been explained time and time again to parents, teachers, and students people still find themselves asking the same question. Are standardized tests a sufficient cost effective way to measure a child’s education? I say yes. Expert analysis has shown over the last few years that standardized testing is helping to improve our education system today. It is the most effective way that the government can monitor our education system. Although the cost is quite substantial the benefits of having standards in education far outweigh their costs.
Standardized testing got its start back in China in the early 1800’s. The purpose of those tests were to find out how well children were learning the ways of Confucianism. It was not until 1936 when the idea of standardized testing was brought to the U. S. It was that same year that the first automatic test scanner was invented and tests were finally mass produced and distributed to the armed forces and businesses throughout the U.S. (Phillips) In 1926 perhaps the most famous of tests in the United States (SAT and ACT) were developed by the College Board which was a nonprofit organization that targeted the education of children in high school and up. It was originally a 90 minute test consisting of 315 questions and had basic math and science questions. It was after World War II that the test took the form that it is known today with separate sections for different subjects. After WWII it became the standard for any high school senior to proceed onto college.
In more recent years a new system of standards has been implemented by former president Bush. In 2001 president Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) which entailed a number of ways to improve the education system today. NCLB promised many of the following things, improved curriculums in schools, money for schools that show improvement, ways to improve schools not meeting standards, more parent involvement in the schools, accountability for schools to take care of their students, and also the choice for students to pick their school. These are only a few of the many promises of NCLB. This was a system implemented not only to improve standardized test scores but to improve schools as a whole in our nation. NCLB has become the new American standard in education today.
Although all of these promises sound good and dandy there are still a lot of people still wondering if it is actually working. Most critics against the system say that there is too much money being spent on testing. Also a lot of these people believe that curriculums are being thinned so schools can prepare for standardized tests. Although in some curriculums are thinned that was not the idea. Schooling is expected to be difficult and a lot of experts say that if the schools just cover a very informational and in depth curriculum there is nothing to worry about when it comes to tests. In fact according to school regulator Diane Martin Allemen, “All we are asking schools to do is educate the children sufficiently. If they would just teach and work as hard as they are supposed to the tests would not be difficult at all.” So in other words education is supposed to be difficult and if teachers just teach, tests are nothing to worry about.
An interesting thing I discovered in my search as well was the fact that of all the people I found that are bashing testing and NCLB have no credible backgrounds of study. No degrees and no prior knowledge of the system, they are not even administrators, it appears that a lot of these people do not even have children that are in school.
Education has been a major priority of America since the beginning. Although it has come a long way the expectations are still the same. Ben Franklin once said “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” This relates to education in so many ways it is not even funny. The progress and advancing that America is making in things such as technology are only going to become more complex. If everything today is becoming more complex and difficult curriculums need to be harder. You have to prepare our youth for the challenges ahead, the youth is our future and if everything is the same as it was fifty years ago there is not much progress to be made.
It is no secret that there are many schools that are not as fortunate as others. Unfortunately a lot of schools are given money for the wrong reasons. Whether its athletic programs or just a high rates in the school district there are many schools that are left in the dark because they are in “bad areas” or have poor athletics. It was becoming less and less about he education and more about how well you could sell the school to the community. This was promised to be stopped however by NCLB. All of the students no matter what area of the country could receive all the same benefits from the government as long as they perform adequately on their standardized tests. Federal grants such as the Congressional Excellence in Education grant raging from $250,000 to $2 million is a grant given for schools showing exceptional test scores year after year. Grants such as this are only a taste of what could be earned as long as schools are doing and teaching what they are supposed to. Although many schools are doing exactly what is supposed to be done there are still some that are subject to thinned curriculums due to test prep. “This is quite eminent especially in high school students taking ACT and SAT tests. Many students will do great on both tests but then when college comes along they will not be ready for any of the challenges ahead.”(Hursh) Many students spend so much of their time studying for all of the standardized tests that they are not given the practical knowledge they need to succeed in the future.
Although it would be nice for students all across the country to be exceeding standards set by the government this simply does not happen. The tests are also used to show if a school is not giving the education that they need to. Many statements from NCLB allow room for schools to improve their test scores over a period of three years. If a sufficient improvement is not being made consequences include but are not limited to firing of staff members, or federal fines for inadequate teaching practices. Although most people do not believe it, the federal government does care about the future so they want to make sure the youth of tomorrow are just as prepared as they should be.
As the years have passed it is no secret that the economy has been in a downward spiral. This economic crisis has proven detrimental to the academic world in some parts of the United States. There are underpaid teachers, strikes among teachers, less educated individuals teaching children, and short staffed schools. I recall my college calculus teacher telling me a story of a math teacher in Michigan. He said when the kids were working with fractions and the teacher was teaching the wrong way because he thought it would be easier for the kids to do. Most people know that fractions are made up of a numerator (top) and denominator (bottom). When you add fractions you must find a common denominator before you add them up. This particular teacher was just adding the top and bottom of the fractions because it was easier for the students to understand. This is only one example of the atrocity that our nation is facing in education today. After doing some follow up research on that particular school the teacher was fired a month later and the actual school was closed down by the state government for improper teaching practices and the school district was fined heavily for its mistakes. Hundreds of thousands of the tax payers dollars down the drain just because no one would take a stand and fix the problem. I recall in my own educational career a principal of my school was fired because our school was not performing on our standardized tests. This particular principal was not allowed to continue in the field of education and all of the students in our school were given a choice to transfer. It was because of standardized testing that the government could monitor my school and take such action.
Across America the message is the same “just teach what you are supposed to and standardized test will come easy.” According to Richard Phelps, a former teacher at a Minnesota high school and author of Defending Standardized Testing he states “I always told my colleagues not to worry. They curriculum has stayed the same for a few years and the scores on the tests are improving so just keep doing what you’re doing.” This was one of many teachers I found that said the same thing about the tests. Most stated that they were never nervous about what was coming in the future, they were worried about what they were teaching that day.
Most people fail to see the benefits of standardized testing. Everyone seems to be complaining about the cost. It is always a money issue. Is standardized testing sucking to much money out of our tax payers? Most tax payers are parents anyway and no parent want their child to have a poor education so I am sure it is easy to answer that question with a no. Parents cannot be there constantly making sure that the school is doing what they should so that is where the federal government and state governments come in. In a way the government is acting like another parent that is constantly monitoring the school system. If your child was at a very poorly run school, wouldn’t you like to know about it? Standardized testing does exactly that. It takes all of these very poorly run schools and give them a chance to sink or swim so to speak. Since 2001 when NCLB was passed by president Bush the annual amount spent on testing and improving our education system skyrocketed 35% in a matter of about three years. Today the average annual amount spent on educational improvement is exceeding about 21.1 billion dollars (nearly 20% of the annual budget) and is constantly going up. The government wants to make sure there is a bright future ahead for our young people.
Since the early 1800’s standardized testing has proved to be an adequate way to monitor the educational habits of children in certain areas of study. Being practiced for just about two hundred years now standardized testing is obviously doing its job. From young Chinese children being tested on their religion to young adults being quizzed on difficult modern math problems the goal has always been the same. The bar is constantly rising. With technology on the constant accent and jobs on the constant decline it is extremely important to succeed in school. Standardized test get you into high school, standardized test tell you what colleges you will not get into. The infamous ACT test that high school seniors are expected to complete dictates the future of young students all across the country. No college and no job wants a failure. The importance of the test is differentiation. You show your intelligence on the ACT then you are let into an institution of higher education that will allow you to obtain practical knowledge in the field you are studying.
Works Cited
Hursh, David. " Exacerbating inequality: the failed promise of the No Child Left Behind Ac." Race Ethnicity and Education 10.3 (2007): 295-308. Web. 4 Apr 2011.
Martin, Diane Allemen. Personal Interview. 7 April 2011
Mathis, William. "No Child Left Behind: Costs and Benefits ." Questia 83. (2003): n. pag. Web. 4 Apr 2011.
Phelps, Richard P., eds. Defending Standardized Testing. Mahwah, N.J. : L. Erlbaum Associates, 2005. Print.
Thomas, Lori G. “No Child Left Behind.” www.prevention.org N.p.; 03 February 2011 retrieved 26 March 2011. <https://www.prevention.org/inc/publications/documents/No_Child.pdf>.
