Imagine a world where one hundred empty bubbles on a piece of paper, a number two pencil, and a time slot of two hours were the deciding factors for the rest of your life. Are you fit for the grade ahead of you? Honors classes? College level courses? A career? This is not very different from what current students are experiencing in classrooms across the country. Children must face exams every year, sometimes even more than once, that are held in artificial environments nearly identical in each state. 

What I have gathered from a decade of standardized test taking, I receive no benefits after taking each exam. In fact, I have never received my score from a test the same school year that it was administered. The school district in which I attended classes from kindergarten to twelfth grade has been receiving awards for having a sufficient number of students passing tests at a proficient level. However, the schools and teachers went wrong when teaching me that knowing how to skim literary passages for important information that will appear in questions five minutes later is more important than public speaking or beneficial computer skills. The education I primarily received in the classroom was not for me to succeed in later years, it was for me to “pass” one exam each year for my school to continue to receive the funding necessary to stay afloat and keep teacher’s jobs. 

There are two types of standardized tests that students will experience: achievement and aptitude (ASCD). Younger students partake in the achievement tests which are administered for much of their elementary school years all the way up to high school. These tests are utilized by school systems and parents to evaluate how effective the school is teaching students and how well an individual student is retaining the information (ASCD). After a certain point in a student’s high school career, they begin to take aptitude tests, the two most common happen to be the ACT and SAT; these predict a student’s performance in higher education. Students have the option to take the ACT and SAT as many times as they would like, rightfully so, because these two tests happen to be one of the largest factors in getting accepted in to a college or a career after high school. It may seem that these tests would efficiently measure a student’s academic performance, after all that is the whole reason for dispensing such important tests. Wrong. These standardized tests are no longer measuring an individual’s achievement that year, instead they are gathering the same data from students in different classrooms, different school systems, and different states, comparing them all to one another. One single assessment, with small variations country wide, are expected to accurately assess every single student, of all demographics and regions in the country the same way. A technique that is very comparable to “one-size fits all” clothing styles. It is just not possible for all types of people to achieve; some may have too big of feet or heads and are incapable of fitting in that clothing. Much like a child in South Carolina, who may be incapable of retaining the same amount of information as someone across the country in Oregon. The assessments do not have nearly enough questions and ranges of topics to adhere to the education that all students receive in the United States. 

Every three years’ teenagers in 73 countries get the opportunity to assess their academic performance by taking the Program for International Student Assessment (Heim). This examination surveys school systems across the world and then compares the performances of the students in one nation to all the others that partook in the exam. Once the results are available, countries have the ability to develop their education system and improve education where it is lacking. Since 2000, when the PISA exams were first administered, the United States has been oddly low in rankings. For a developed, first-world country with millions of dollars going in to education, students were performing at relatively below average rates. Joe Heim used his knowledge on education and recent PISA results to express the concern the U.S should have for our education system. 

“In the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) measuring math literacy in 2015, U.S. students ranked 40th in the world. The U.S. average math score of 470 represents the second decline in the past two assessments — down from 482 in 2012 and 488 in 2009. The U.S. score in 2015 was 23 points lower than the average of all of the nations taking part in the survey” (Heim). 

It is not as if we are just short of the top three ranking, we are well below where we should be as a nation when we take in to account how well we thrive in other aspects of our country. Millions of dollars are dedicated to education each year and new initiatives are constantly getting passed, but there have been no signs of improvement. Therefore, it is not the money, or the students, or our environment that keep our scores low. It is how students are taught in the classroom and the techniques that are used to asses said learning. 

Standardized testing does not accurately represent academic performance and therefore, falsely ranks the United States education system among other countries. The assessments falter due to monopolistic companies, distorted curriculums, and dehumanizing qualities of such tests; the way the system is set up, the millions of test scores have little influence on student performance but have severe impacts. Not only are low scores a negative display of school districts nation wide and the United States, but more importantly have negative impacts on those taking the tests. Forcing standardized testing on students in all grade levels is not efficient and serves little benefit to anyone but the companies that are distributing tests and receiving millions of dollars doing so. The curriculum taught within the classroom is now being geared towards what questions will be on the test and how they will be asked, rather than critical thinking and skills that allow students to succeed in life after high school. Even when students can pass the examinations at a proficient level, they still become just a number and are compared to students across the country; that number can affect their entire future. The process that students must endure to pass standardized testing originates from the few corporations that dominate the industry and wrongly insist that standardized testing is a more efficient way to measure academic performance. It is vital that we, as a nation, make a movement to continue to reform the measurement process because the poor test scores represent our education system and create a smaller demand for education, resulting in the United States at the bottom of academic rankings among other countries. 

Pearson is the largest company in standardized testing. The corporation collects millions of dollars but still receives many complaints. Some of these grievances include a slow grading process, difficulties with their websites, and test content. The way questions are worded make it very difficult for students to answer the question correctly and therefore, they are set up for failure. Even if a student wanted to opt out of taking a Pearson administered test, it would be extremely difficult because the corporation is in control of approximately 40% of the industry (Oliver). John Oliver, a talk show host with high viewing numbers, used the entirety of one show to debunk standardized testing. He made it no secret that he believed such testing is irrelevant and only inflicts negative impacts. By doing so, Oliver mentioned Pearson’s complete hold over an already corrupt system:

 “A hypothetical girl could take Pearson tests from kindergarten through at least eighth grade, tests by the way that she studied for using Pearson curriculum and textbooks taught to her by teachers who were certified by their own Pearson test. And if at some point she was tested for a learning disability…that’s also a Pearson test and if she eventually got sick of Pearson and dropped out, she would have to take the GED, which is now… a Pearson test” (Oliver 11:37-12:01). 

This just goes to show that tests can be given to students that have negative affects but it is impossible to escape the system. 

When an industry is run by companies that feed off of money alone and have no interest in what they are selling, it is difficult to receive any benefits. Companies alike only exist for monetary and administrative reasons. These two purposes result in punishments, defunding specifically, for school systems. Corporations can hold incentives for the districts that receive adequate test scores, and vice versa may experience defunding if their scores fall below a certain performance level. This creates a drive for all schools to perform well, sadly, this does point the curriculum away from what is important and towards doing whatever it takes to receive a high score. 

Curriculums are now becoming distorted because they are geared to towards passing and not retaining necessary information. Due to high expectation of accountability, it is necessary for the school to administer standardized examinations. States have options of creating a test that does not follow all of government standards, but still follow the basic regulations. Although this is a possibility, many states use very generic, cookie-cutter exams to asses a student’s performance. Even with different variations of tests, schools still expect to have high scores and to do so they shift their curriculum to fit with what will be on the test. The information provided in an article published on Education Week is regarding distorted curriculums and the negative impact it has on students when it stated, “critics say that such testing programs narrow student learning to what is tested- and that what is tested is only a sample of what children should know” (Assessment). Curriculums should include critical thinking and problem solving that way students can gain skills that will benefit them later in life. If the children are only taught information that they will need to know only for that year, then they will not preserve anything; they will only memorize what they will need to know for the assessment then it will be forgotten by the time summer rolls around. 

Standardized testing and low academic performance rates have not been a recent problem. Acts establishing additional benefits for education have dated back to the 60’s during Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency. However, there has not been improvement to put education on the back burner, in fact problems are beginning to arise more and more, making education desperate for reform. 

No Child Left Behind, an act signed by George W. Bush was a reform to the education system that required testing on math, reading, and science every year for students between third and eighth grade and then once more in high school (Klein). Schools would either be considered passed or failed after using adequate yearly progress (AYP) as a measuring method. The education department believed scores were below average due to certain demographics such as, low income, minorities, special education, foreign language students. Therefore, these students were primarily targeted for testing in order to strengthen scores. However, by the 2013-2014 school year many states remained below the proficient level and the reformed act was considered unsuccessful. It turns out the act that was designed to increase performance rates backfired and created a form of standardized tests that were nonspecific and incapable of meshing well with students in most communities. 

In a recent USA Today article, Gregory Korte examined the difference in education acts over the years and what exactly made them inefficient. If schools continued to come up short of what was expected (competent test scores) they began to experience severe punishments as mentioned by Korte, “States that wanted their fair share of federal funding were required to fix schools that failed to improve test scores adequately… after five years the school had a limited number of dire choices: fire the principal and most of the staff, convert to a charter school, lengthen the school day or year, or close down the school entirely” (Korte). These consequences drove teachers to fear for their job and began to alter the way they taught in the classroom. Important skills dissolved. Facts that came straight from the exams were the prime topic. Class periods became learning the exam, practicing the exam, and taking the exam. Student education fell from a top priority to second, right behind school funding and ranking. Standardized testing began to lose its efficiency after the No Child Left Behind Act was enforced. While students, specifically minorities, gained a larger focus, their scores did not reflect well with all of the changes that were being made. Students were becoming less students and more of a score that resulted in benefits for a school system. Standardized testing had lost its primary meaning. 

Tests are no longer measuring a student’s performance. They are now testing to see if a school is efficient in teaching meaningless information, a student is prepared enough to move on to the next grade, or a teenager is capable of attending college and moving on to the real world. The individuality with each test has vanished and now the students are lost in the numbers. Improvement has become so washed out that students are exhausted of learning. Understandably so, because no one wants to learn about the same material for several years just to be tested on it the same way at the end of each semester. Reading is a lost cause, mathematics is pointless, science is just a question that requires a student to read a graph. Classes like history, art, and music are losing funding and often untouched in the school system. Stephen P. Heyneman has dedicated decades of time to research performance rates in the United States and countries alike. He has analyzed the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) every three years since 2000, and with this wide variety of data, Heyneman was able to come to a conclusion; students have become tired of the constant testing and the fear of what their scores will do to their future. This has resulted in catastrophic test scores and stamina within the United States, and according to Heyneman, “There are many hypotheses as to why American schools are less efficient than those of many other countries. One hypothesis is that American school children express a lower ‘demand to learn’ than do school children in countries with high efficiency in their school systems” (Heyneman). Compared to other nations, the desire to continue on and strive for greatness in education is miniscule within the U.S. If we are able to turn around the way children look at education and make it seem as a privilege rather than a chore, student performance will increase as well as United States education rankings. 

Admittedly, there are educators and critics that believe standardized tests are considerably efficient and beneficial to a student’s education. Hypothetically, these tests are meant to assist a student and their experience while being schooled; at some point in time a student will pick up some new and innovative information. But what is that small fraction to the immense amounts that could be mustered while learning new topics each year and skills that assist in the future? Gail Gross, a former educator and expert in human behavior has used her previous experiences to conclude that there are positives that arise from consistent standardized testing, “The standardized test is an objective and critical measure of achievement in skills, knowledge, and abilities, and must pass the criteria of measurement validity, reliability, and bias, as well as an awareness of the test’s potential limitations in scoring” (Gross). Gross believes that these generic assessments have the ability to correctly influence all students and appropriately rank their retained knowledge and skills. However, it does not appear that Gross has taken in to consideration that these assessments are set up to make it almost impossible to measure important qualities such as personal “skills, knowledge, and ability” because the questions used on each exam are identical across the board or at least a reworded version. Therefore, the questions do not adhere to each student and cannot measure that specific student’s capabilities. There is little to no evidence of the regulations for exam validity, reliability, and bias. In fact, it was even mentioned in John Oliver’s video that practice exams are administered in order to identify the easily answered questions so they can be eliminated or altered to a higher level of difficulty. It is true that there are students who do benefit from standardized tests; but when those few are compared to the large numbers of students who do not receive the necessary education and retain the important skills that are necessary to perform well on the exam, it is apparent that standardized testing needs to be reformed or completely removed from educational policies. 

For years students have been drowning in the tests that are distributed annually while large corporations are reaping the benefits. Tests that are “necessary” to assess how well a student has been learning the past year and offers advice as to whether or not moving up a grade level is the best option. Tests that remove a proper education from students and replace it with dollar signs and disoriented incentives. Tests that require a student to know how to answer as many questions as possible in a time frame rather than analyzing questions and answering them correctly. Tests that encourage students to fear for their future. Tests that make a score more important than an individual. A change in this deranged system would give U.S. citizens the opportunity to receive an education that prepares them for later years. One score would no longer decide someone’s entire future. The stress that arises each year will vanish. Not only would the reparations of standardized testing improve an individual’s life, it impacts the entire nation. People of all ages will begin to have more incentive to learn and in turn will put more effort in to learning the necessary information to succeed as a nation. Thus, moving the United States up the education rankings and creating a new sense of learning within the country. 
