Students all over the world are receiving a condensed version of their education in lieu of hours spent focusing on standardized tests. Even children in preschool spend an average of 5 hours a year testing, and by the time they reach eighth grade they spend over five times that much, almost twenty six hours taking tests during school hours (Layton). Something this time consuming should be producing positive results, yet it only produces certain results intended to drive curriculum and not learning. Standardized testing has come a long way from where it started in the early 1900’s, but not in a good way. Tests that use to measure students overall learning now measure their ability to memorize. These test now encompass such a specific set of concepts that students are no longer being taught the lessons that standardized tests don’t include. Test that were originally created to expand upon students learning now limit them. Instead of being tested on all they have learned throughout the year, students are now only taught what will be on the test in hopes of receiving high scores. Standardized testing is most often thought of as necessary for measuring the achievements of students, teachers and schools, yet it most often provides an overwhelming false generalization about these three populations. High stakes testing is by far doing more harm than good to its victims. Ultimately, standardized tests take away from schools already limited resources, eat away at valuable instructional time and reflect poorly on teachers, and also affect students of all ages in terms of their success in school and their own self confidence. 

It is becoming evident through standardized tess that students are receiving a limited and non-creative education by focusing all of their time on the test, and being objectified by the numbered scores they receive on them in the process. High stakes testing has changed the face of education as we know it. Before students take college placement exams and high school finals they are given hundreds of tests starting at the young age of five that do nothing to further their education. Those who are in favor of these standardized tests think that “if students are quizzed every week, they would probably study more during a semester than if they were tested only on a midterm and a final exam” (Roediger, 5). While this may be a thought in the back of people's minds, it is most definitely not reasonable to increase the number of high stakes test simply because students would “probably” study more. To put it simply, those in favor of standardized tests cannot come up with any concrete reason why these tests actually help out children. 

In fact, school is becoming a place where students feel the most stress and anxiety. Students in grades as young as kindergarten should not have their school and even home lives driven by anxiety due to testing. According to a book entitled The Test : Why Our Schools are Obsessed with Standardized Testing But You Don't Have to Be “A little bit of stress can be healthy and motivational, but too much of the wrong kind can be toxic...and students catch anxiety like a bug” (Kamenetz, 18). Not only does this anxiety from testing take a toll on students of all ages mentally, but “teachers and parents across the country report students throwing up, staying home with stomach aches, locking themselves in the bathroom,, crying, having nightmares, and otherwise acting out on test days” (Kamenetz, 18). Knowing all of this information, it is hard to say that standardized testing can be good for students. If tests cause this type of anxiety for students in elementary school grades, imagine what it gets like as these students get older. By overwhelming young children with such tests, schools “put at risk children’s love of learning at an age when they are just starting their classroom experience” (Mantell). I am sure that any person can attest that a negative school experience stay with you far longer than a positive one. When did standardized test become even more important than the students taking them? Even the United Federation of teachers acknowledges that “the testing craze has gotten so completely out of hand that we’re now seeing students in kindergarten, first and second grade forced to take exams with bubble-in answer sheets. We all know that this is developmentally inappropriate” (Mantell). If students are taught from an age such as kindergarten that all that comes from their education is a test score, are we supposed to expect them to stay positive and enjoy learning? When the bar is set ten notches above what a student has actually been taught in school, how does anyone expect them to succeed. 

Unfortunatly, standardized tests evoke such a high level of importance that they actually limit the potential of students in the process. Bob Sternberg, a provost at Oklahoma State University has spent much of his life developing tests that encompass the entire individual rather than just what they can memorize from school. His goal is to help other students succeed and have a better learning experience than he did as a young child. Sternberg says in his Ted Talk that he became very test anxious at a young age and ultimately, “I did poorly on the tests, as a result my teachers thought I was stupid and since they thought I was stupid I thought I was stupid, and since I thought I was stupid I did stupid work and they were happy I did stupid work because I was meeting their expectations” (Sternberg). It is very easy for the pressure of these high stakes test to push students into a pattern like this. If students do poorly on standardized tests, teachers believe that the student is just not smart because of how much importance is placed on their scores. When students start standardized testing at such a young age they are treated differently because of their scores for their entire education. All it takes is one test and one bad score to label them for most of their educational careers. It does not matter that the tests are not actually testing their skills, wisdom, or meaning of their learning. Thankfully, Bob Sternberg had a teacher who believed he was more than just a test score that had followed him through years of school, but “many students don’t have a teacher who believes that they are more than a test score and they never defeat that self fulfilling prophecy that test scores put on them” (Sternberg). There is nothing positive about overwhelming students with tests and then punishing them for their scores. Sure some students do well on these standardized tests, but what do they get for them? They have successfully spent most of their education learning the information on these tests only to not be able to use it in the future. Students come to school to get an education that will teach them how to survive for the rest of their lives, and instead get bombarded with standardized tests and leave school thinking that they do not have anything to offer, low confidence and high anxiety.

Even though teachers are not taking the tests, standardized testing is sufficiently ruining the field of teaching and forcing teachers to pursue a mandated curriculum instead of a healthy and helpful one. In most cases, teachers originally pursue their jobs because they want to be in the field of helping people and changing lives. Teachers have the ability to change the lives of children everyday by teaching them valuable lessons that they will use for the rest of their lives. It is unrealistic to say that teachers get complete freedom on what they teach, because every state and school has a mandated curriculum, but when a teacher is only teaching students the topics of a standardized test and completely disregarding other topics, they are no longer doing the job they set out to do. Those who support the idea of standardized testing believe that it is simple for teachers to improve their students test scores. They state that “teachers can use the information provided from standardized test scores to guide further instruction”. They believe that “conscientious teachers will pay attention to how students perform on tests and use that knowledge to inform their teaching in the future” (Roediger, 24). In theory, this does sound ideal. However, teachers no longer have control over what they teach and how they teach it due to the strict rules set down by standardized tests and their guidelines.

Teachers are no longer trusted to educate and evaluate their own students. When test scores to not reflect high achievement, teachers are not given the opportunity to re teach students, they simply have to drop it and move on to the next test. If the information that students are struggling with is not part of the test curriculum then teachers simply have no time to teach it. In a survey conducted by the National Education Association, 42% of teachers acknowledge that standardized testing has a negative impact on their classroom saying that, “over the past decade, the high stakes testing regime has squeezed out much of the curriculum that can make schools an engaging and enriching experience for students, and teachers have been forced to dilute their creativity to teach to the test” (Walker). Standardized tests have gone so far as to force teachers to stop teaching important lessons, and now teachers all over the country would rather stop educating than have to educate in such a strict manner. When standardized tests take away the job that teachers originally set out to do, they are not being helpful to the classroom. According to the paper Education Week, you can “ask any teacher and she can tell you which students can read and write. That telling usually comes in the form of letter grades or evaluations that break down progress on skills” that teachers conduct all year (Jouriles). Teachers are fully capapble of assessing and helping their own students, but are no longer being given the chance.

Also, standardized tests punish teachers in unfair ways by adding up their success as a teacher in terms of their students scores on certain tests. In order to weed out the good teachers from the bad lawmakers think that the “quick ‘n’ easy way to do that is to tie teacher evaluation to test scores” (Walker). These tests do not care about the student who takes them, but punish the teacher does not spend all of his/her classroom time teaching to the test. They also punish the teacher who is unequipped to teach its students material on every aspect of the test. According to the United Federation of Teachers, “It’s unfair and unacceptable for teachers to be judged on tests for which they cannot properly prepare their students because they lack the necessary curriculum resources” (Mantell). With standardized tests on the rise, teacher's previous, well known curriculum is being thrown out the window. In this scenario the teachers are ultimately learning all of this new and strict curriculum for the first time as well. It is unfair to assume that a teacher is “bad” or not doing their job just because the student in their class did not do as well as others, even if those students succeed on the average school day. After being stripped of their freedom in the classroom and being judged by the test scores of their students, “teachers are demoralized and feel very powerless because of test driven accountability” a fourth grade teacher from florida explained on youtube that “I have experienced the depressing gradual downfall and misdirection of education that has slowly eaten away at my love of teaching” (Kamenetz, 23).  Ultimately, “nearly half of surveyed teachers have considered quitting because of standardized testing” (Walker). It can only be assumed that if standardized testing sticks around, or even becomes larger that the population of teachers will continue to decrease until there are no more teachers to give the tests in the first place.

Standardized tests not only affect the individuals in the schools, but the schools themselves by draining them of recourses and bringing down the reputation of good schools. Standardized tests do not measure at all what they claim to measure. In fact, “Teaching to the test causes score inflation (score gains that don’t represent actual improvements in learning) which misleads the public into thinking schools are improving, when they may not be better” (Fairtest). It is unfair to lie to the public simply because a test score determines the value of a school. Frankly, it can go either way, schools who have high test scores may be bad and schools who have low test scores may actually be good. These tests do not measure the academic achievement or growth of students, but use the scores earned on these tests to discriminate against students and schools (even if they make schools look better than they really are). While these tests knowingly do not measure students actual learning in school, “standardized test results now determine everything from whether or not a student moves to the next grade to the level of funding that schools receive” (Mantell). Not only is this unfair, but it reduces even further the level of education that schools are able to provide their students. 

These tests themselves cause schools to deplete their budget by paying for the tests, their instructional time and teachers to prep students for them, and when the students do not perform exemplary their budgets are cut even more. According to the American Federation of Teachers, “the estimated annual testing cost per pupil ranged from $700 to more than $1,000 per pupil in several grades that had the most testing. Additionally, in most grades, more than $100 per test-taker could be reallocated to purchase instructional programs, technology, or even better tests” (Nelson). This is incredibly important for the life and vitality of each individual school. With money and funding being wasted on these tests schools are becoming weaker, especially when the test scores do not validate their spending for the tests. Think about how much money schools could save by cutting down on the number of tests they mandate for students each year. With the money that schools spend supplying tests and instruction beforehand they could be improving and building up the education they provide to their students instead of tearing it down. Kamenetz states in her book that, “a 2012 report by the Brookings institution found $669 million in direct annual spending on assessments in forty-five states” (Kamenetz, 17). Schools “waste billions of dollars and untold hours by distorting the entire enterprise of school” (Kamenetz, 17). There is no better way to put this argument, than schools are wasting away their precious funds for something that helps no one. It would be one thing if these tests helped student and teachers, or actually produced well rounded students, but they don’t. 

Ultimately, it would vastly help for schools to use the money that they spend on testing for other programs that boost the school's reputation and budget. The AFT believes that, “redirecting time and money devoted to testing to other uses would provide a lot more time for instruction- possibly including partial restoration of art, music and PE programs, during the existing school day” (Nelson). This solution to the problem that standardized testing causes provides a much more rounded education for students and gives a much more valuable reputation for schools. It would look much better for a school to have successful students, athletes and musicians than students who cannot make it to college because of the pressure standardized tests have put on their education. The budget that schools have effects a lot more than the students in them. The Washington Post identifies the drawback of spending money on standardized testing as a list of many important things that schools take for granted, “schools and districts must divert funding once used for hiring teachers, providing academic support for ESE, ESOL, and struggling students, offering summer learning programs, maintaining school facilities, training teachers, establishing competitive salaries to attract and keep good teachers, etc. in order to meet excessively strict testing requirements” (Strauss). Not only are schools losing money, but they are losing the teachers and programs that make them a successful school to begin with. 

Standardized tests punish the efforts of students, teachers and schools themselves. There are no positive aspects of these high stakes tests that outweigh the countless negatives. If standardized testing is not dramatically changed or stopped we will have successfully limited the education of our future generations. No student or teacher should have to stand back while education is stripped of it’s meaning and replaced with senseless information. It should be plain to see that standardized testing no longer serves our school system for any positive purpose. Based on all of the data show about standardized test scores, it is hard to say that they are improving students education. The achievement of students all over the world has not shot up due to standardized testins, and teachers still have little freedom to express their creativity and feel confident about their teaching. No one, teacher or student alike should feel like the school system has set them up to fail. These ideas paint a picture of what is happening to schools right now, and what will continue to happen if we go down this road. The schools system is failing, and its primary cause is standardized testing. These tests needs to be controlled and limited in order to get back the freedom education needs. If we believe that education matters, we need to save it.
