Times have changed, in the United States we are now testing more than ever before and tests playing a huge role in determining whether or not our students are learning (Conley). Standardized testing is taking over the country slowly but surely as more and more people latch on to the idea that tests are the definite indicator that a child will be successful. Since the 1990's many different programs have been implemented to try and boost test score up and promote education. Common Core State Standards were a program introduced by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers in June 2010 and have since then been implemented in 47 states and District of Columbia (Conley). The goal of these standards are to create shared national  level to which every student can be held to and to ensure that they are ready for college and beyond (Conley). These standards are applied to grades K-12 and not only dictate what is being taught but have an impact on how the instructors teach it (Conley). These standards along with other standardized tests unfairly test students and make it difficult for teachers. Therefore, because there is no valid information that standardized testing is an effective measure of student success, the use of it should decrease very significantly and the tests and curriculum should be altered altogether. 

The massive explosion of testing in America began in the early 90s when a statistic surfaced claiming that when comparing the standard test scores of 40 different countries, the United States scored near the bottom (Katz). This caused President George Bush to implement the No Child Left Behind Act in which, schools were then held accountable for the students' performance and the gap between the rich students grades and the poor students grades was sought to be shortened (Katz). The program tested students every year in order to identify and fix failing schools. Prior to this initiative, testing was only used to get an idea of whether the students were grasping the information or if they needed help (Kohn). And there was no evidence that stated that this method was not working. However, when the statistics surfaced that US students' test scores were lower than the global average, what was the first thing they changed? The tests.

Recently, the No Child Left Behind Act was ironically left behind and Common Core and more standardized tests took its place. Although the Common Core Standards is a more logical idea than No Child Left Behind, the idea is still generally the same in that testing should be standardized. In addition, the Common Core is now implementing 2 consortia which will make update the tests and assessments to the current standards and in effect, make them more difficult than before (Craft). This will only cause more students to fail, thus leading the United States back to the cycle of more testing.

Although the intentions of the country's wide shift to education standards were good, the problem arose when they were implemented. Teachers were graded on their students test scores which means teachers will push students more for better grades and less for actual learning (Kohn). Big grading companies also often have quotas for the number of grades they give out on tests. For example, a SAT essay section should have a certain amount of 3s or a certain amount of 4s (Kohn). The graders supervisors will tell the graders to "look for more 3s" or "look at it like 4" (Kohn). This decreases the validity of the tests and makes them even more pointless than they already are. 

The least the test makers could do is make the tests good right? Unfortunately that's not the case. Instead of teaching the kids on things that could actually help them later on in life, things like character and morals students cram useless information into their short term memory and spit it back out onto tests that tell them nothing. One example of how poorly these tests were made is an 8th grade reading comprehension test that included a story called "The Pineapple and the Hare" (Last). The story was a spinoff of the classic "Tortoise and the Hare" however the moral of this story was a little different. Kids were asked to answer questions about the passage and hands flew up immediately (Last). The moral was "Pineapples do not have sleeves" which is not a metaphor it is simply a poorly made story (Last). Kids and parents were outraged so much that the story is known as Pineapplegate and one kid said "I was confused the whole time" (Smith). This is only a specific example, generally the tests are testing the wrong things and need to be changed significantly. According to the Washington Post, 600 students in Seattle opted out of a common core test in January of 2015. The tests are clearly not liked by the students and for good reason (Smith).

It's not just the students that are struggling with the new standards; the teachers are having a hard time accepting them as well. Teachers across the country are furious at the new standards. Nancie Atwell, winner of the Global Teacher award which is said to be "the Nobel Prize for teachers," is against Common Core stating; "It's a movement that's turned teachers into technicians, not reflective practitioners"(Teachers). Also in a survey by Education Week Research Center which survey 500 teachers nationally, 55% said they did not think the Common Core assessments would improve student learning (Teachers). Although this is only a slight majority, the number should still be highly considered especially when the teachers themselves do not think these tests work to do the one thing they are supposed to do. In addition, some teachers struggle with implementing the standards which only makes it harder on the students (Teachers).

Since these test are not good for students and are not good for teachers who are they good for? That's the problem; the people benefitting from this massive influx in testing are none other than the test makers themselves (Katz). Big education companies profit billions of dollars from these tests while the students suffer under the stress. These companies, companies like Pearson, implement these tests in states that accept the standardized tests and they are often failed (Katz). When the tests are failed Pearson sells teaching tools to help students prepare for the tests in addition to the pricey textbooks (Katz). Pearson made over 5 billion last year and are continuing to grow (Katz). As they grow they urge for new higher standards, which means new tests and more money. However, with all of this new testing studies show that our countries test scores have not risen, they have actually declined (Marchitello). According to the National Center for Education Statistics, student scores in all subjects have decreased slightly from 2000 to 2012 (Marchitello). This means that not only do these standards waste money; there is no evidence to prove that they even work. This is hurting our students and making it harder for teachers as well. Education is the one industry that profits by selling a product in which there is no valid research done by the consumers (Marchitello).

Why do we give into the false information that these companies throw at us? It's simple, it's easier to measure test scores than it is to measure a child's motivation or intellectual curiosity; it's easier to say it's going well than to see if it actually makes sense to do it (Kohn). Politicians love standardized tests because it's easy for them to show that they care about the betterment of our education by throwing up a couple test statistics and saying how they will change them. In addition parents have developed this idea that a kid needs to do well on tests and will punish them if they do not. The big businesses have us wrapped up in this idea that if you are good at tests you are smart and will succeed in life when there is no valid evidence proving this.

In fact, statistics have "found a statistical association between high scores on standardized tests and relatively shallow thinking" (Kohn). Although these are only statistical correlations and do not imply absolute correspondences this is still a significant figure. As a general rule, the higher the test scores the lower deep thinking occurs. This exemplifies the fact that these tests scores do nothing for students. Student's tests scores are lined up with how much money their family makes (Bradley). If the families income in higher than the test scores will be too. Essentially, a test score is only an indicator of how much money a student's parents have and not whether or not that student will be successful in life. The real effects of these standardized tests and curriculum are over pressured students and ineffective teachers.. 

These tests not only affect the way the students think but they affect the parents as well. Parents are going to ridiculous lengths to insure that their son or daughter succeeds in school and succeeds meaning doing well on tests. According to an Atlantic Monthly article "Millions of families are now in a state of nervous collapse regarding college admissions" (Weissbourd). Because parents believe that tests are a good indicator of how well a child will do in life parents are putting more pressure on their students to perform than ever. Parents have begun to take extreme lengths to insure student success, lengths such as falsely reporting their child to have ADD so they can get more time on a test or tutoring their children for the SAT as early as 5th grade. In one case, 22-year-old Sarah whose parents were scared of what would happen if she didn't do well in everything is now a "performance machine" (Weissbourd). Her therapist told a reporter "The work of therapy is very slowly helping her start over and figure out what she wants, who she is. She's having to go back and create a self" (Weissbourd). Clearly these tests are causing an immense amount of pressure on students when they already have enough to worry about.

Students are stressed out, and with stress comes a decrease in creativity. With these standards students are forced to look for the "right" answer the "right" way. When students are forced to learn one standard set of curriculum their reason for innovation goes down and they just follow the instructions. By standardizing education by state this causes students to all learn the same information and essentially be standardized themselves. When looking at test scores of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for 50 countries and the entrepreneurship of those countries there is a significant correlation. "The countries with the highest PISA scores scored lower on measures of entrepreneurship than did countries with more modest scores" (Starko). The correlation implies that the promotion of high test scores limits the flexibility in students thinking. This means as the United States pushes for more and more tests, we will be pushing out creativity with it.

However, not all tests limit creativity. Some tests allow students to creatively write. Most tests test students on a plethora of information that is difficult for them to memorize. This forces students to memorize the content in their short-term memory and not the actual meaning of what they are learning. In order for students to make logical and creative ideas, it is important for them to learn the meaning of the information so that they can connect ideas and make it their own (Smith). By forcing students to take the massive amount of tests that they do, we are implying that the information that is important to learn are just the basic facts.

The standards blindingly point the blame at the curriculum when the real problem with low education rates in the youth in America is poverty. When we take into account poverty, American students rank near the top on international tests (Craft). Poverty is clearly directly related to student's performance and cannot be ignored when discussing possible ways to increase students' performance. Although it is time and time again. More money is being funneled into programs like Common Core and standardized tests when the money should be going to helping with childhood poverty. In 2012 our rate of childhood poverty was over 23%, which is the second highest among all industrialized countries (Craft). Despite our "low test scores" our economy is rated 5th innovated in the world according to the Global Innovation Index of 2013 (Craft). 

It's easy to see the benefits of standardized curriculum from a shallow perspective. In theory it really does sound great, standardize curriculum so that all students in the state are learning the same information at the same grade level and we can focus on increasing the education as a whole (Greene). If teachers all taught the same thing for each grade level than the students would know what they are going into and teachers could not do whatever they wanted (Kendall). By standardizing curriculum you can make sure that every teacher is giving their students the same level of education (Greene). In addition, standardized curriculum means that even when a student moves to a new state or county the curriculum might not be the same, but the teacher knows exactly what the student needs to succeed. Teachers know what they need to teach the students for the next course and teachers in the next course know what students in the next class need to succeed. Also these standards are made by scholarly experts who have done a lot of research on the topic so they should be creating the best possible standards for students (Kendall). 

However, this standardization calls for teachers to follow plans that may not work for their students. Teachers should be able to adapt and change the curriculum if they see fit so that it can better serve the purpose of teaching the students useful skills and critical thinking. These standards were also based off of no actual real life implementation and rather off of research.

 If the main point of our education system is to increase our test scores, then the United States has a huge problem. The Common Core and standardized testing take away from what our education system is really about; teaching our students how to become a successful and productive member of society. We are too wrapped up in the idea that our test scores are lower than other countries when there is no evidence that increasing test scores means that our students are getting smarter. Although it sounds good on paper, when you look into the idea of standardized testing the problems show themselves and our students lose out. Since the 1990's our education system has been falling into a pit of useless tests and wasted money. What we really need in this time is quality education that will teach our students character, curiosity, and morals. Not only do standardized tests take money away from areas that actually have an impact on our the success of our education system such as childhood poverty, but they put students under unneeded amounts of pressure and solve nothing. The common core should be modified to focus on skills and practical knowledge rather than useless facts. In addition standardized tests should not have such a large impact on the success of a student.

