In the educational system, standardized tests are common evaluations that students and teachers must go through many times throughout their academic career. However, many believe that this method of evaluation is overall harmful and, for lack of a better word, distracting for everyone involved. Many agree that yearly standardized tests have become ineffective because of the creation of the achievement gap between, over-abundant when it comes to how much time students spend testing and how many tests are given out per year, and that since teachers are burdened with their job being risked when it comes to these tests, they have to “teach to the test.”

Standardized testing as we know it today has been around for many years. The first use of a standardized test was during the Han Dynasty in China, which was from 100 A.D to 220 A.D. Eventually, standardized testing was introduced into Europe during the 19th century. Countries in the Western Hemisphere were not using standardized testing. They were using debates, open discussion, and student essays as their main method of testing individuals during this time. However, standardized testing eventually spread to Western countries, mainly the United States, to assess the social roles of incoming immigrants and to remove any bias or favoritism. 

The first big instance of the high-stakes standardized testing as we know of it today, and the biggest turning point of education in general, first appeared in 1983 with the publication of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform by the National Commission on Excellence in Education (Au and Gourd). This report set all the standards of education of today, including the content requirement for high school students being 4 years of English, 3 years of mathematics, 3 years of lab sciences, and 3 years of social studies. Within a year of this publication, 54 state level commissions were created. By the year 2000, every state except Iowa had instilled a state mandated assessment. In 2001, President G.W. Bush pushed that funding be connected to student test scores, which eventually led to the No Child Left Behind Act being passed in late 2001, which was the second and most recent turning point of the US educational system. The passing of NCLB caused a large and noticeable gap between different groups of students over the past decade and a half.

Modern high-stakes standardized tests are made to benefit specific demographics, therefore creating the achievement gap. Whites, Asians, and students from wealthier socioeconomic backgrounds have consistently obtained higher scores on almost all if not all standardized tests, compared to Black students, Hispanic students, and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. According to Rooks, “one recent study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that the gap for achievement test scores between rich and poor have grown by almost 60% since the 1960s and are now almost twice as large as the gap between white students and children of other races.” According to this study, it is clear that there is a serious gap between different groups of students and is still growing as of now. In Virginia, surprisingly, only 45% of blacks must pass the mathematics standardized tests, while 68% of Whites and an appalling 82% of Asians are required to pass the math portion of the state mandated standardized test, which speaks to how appallingly low of an expectation the educational system has of some of its students (Rooks). Also, some teachers believe that these requirements are very discriminatory in nature, since some races have to achieve more than others. 

The achievement gap does not only pertain to ethnicity and socioeconomic status. It also includes English proficiency and disability. On some standardized tests on some states, it is required that students who are English language learners and students with disabilities and in special education programs take the same tests as other students, without any special accommodations. My brother, who has autism, and the rest of his classmates had to take the PSAT during high school without any accommodations, even though they clearly did not have the mental capacity to complete the assessment compared to their peers without learning disabilities; yet, their scores counted. Also, there have been plenty of non-English speaking students new to the US or students who speak less fluent English who have had to take reading and writing assessments without language accommodations, like a dictionary or just a test booklet written in the student’s native language. 

Standardized tests have too much power over teachers, and classrooms in general. Because of this, teachers “teach to the test” to not get fired or prevent their school from not receiving funding because of their students having low scores. To help visualize the illogicality of this, Roger Tilles give this analogy: 

“If these value-added techniques were applied to other professions as they are being applied to teachers, it would mean that dentists be would evaluated not on their skills but only on how many cavities a dentist’s patients get in a year or with a doctor on how many times his patients get sick in a year. Similarly, police are not evaluated on the number of crimes committed on their beat, nor fire personnel on number of fires in their jurisdiction.” (Strauss)

If this concept was applied to other professions, it would seem completely unreasonable and unfair. So why is this method of evaluation not absurd for teachers? It does not matter how many cavities the dentist sees, it only matters how well the dentist was able to correct the cavities. Doctors are evaluated by whether their patients healed and if they did, how well they healed. Therefore, teachers should not be evaluated on how many of their students pass or fail a standardized test, they should be evaluated on how much the student is learning in class and whether they are making improvements in the classroom.

Ever since the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the education system has used nation and state mandated standardized tests as the main evaluation of the effectiveness of teachers. Also, if a school’s students got high scores on the exams, then the school could possibly receive additional funding, which is then another reason for teachers/educators to teach the content that only pertains to the exam, because of the Race to the Top program. Race to the Top was introduced by President Barack Obama back in July of 2009. According to the US Department of Education, through Race to the Top, it wants to advance education reforms that surround 4 educational areas: adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy; building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction; recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals; and turning around our lowest-achieving schools. However, Balczo states that by doing this, a cycle begins where the low performing school receives less funding, therefore programs are cut. The students have less opportunities, while talented teachers are drawn to better funded schools. Eventually, those schools that have continually received less funding will be shut down completely, causing many teachers to have to relocate and find other jobs. The students will then be forced to move to different schools to receive a decent education. Also, since teachers and administrators are sometimes so desperate for their schools to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind, there has been multiple recorded incidents of possible and actual tampering of the test booklets and scantrons. Overall, standardized testing hastens the steady decline of school systems. 

Also, the quality of students’ education is declining because they are not always being taught quality lessons that the end of year mandated exams requires. Speaking from experience, for example, there are different tenses that words can be conjugated in. On previous standardized tests, in the reading and writing comprehension sections, the names and concepts of those verb tenses were never required for students to know, therefore never taught. I am just now learning the meaning of the tenses that I have been using all my life in college, when I probably should have known much earlier. Also, there are other grammar lessons that were missed in my education because they were not required to know for any exams. For example, the difference between active and passive voice in writing and speaking. I am just now learning that this concept exists, and that I tend to write passively instead of actively. 

The number of standardized tests that pupils must take are over-abundant and overwhelming for teachers, students, and even the parents of the students. According to Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post, per year, eighth grade students spend the most times taking standardized tests, an average around 25 hours. Tenth grade students are tested the most according to the number of different tests they are required to take, around 10 tests per year, on average (Layton). President Obama proclaimed in a video from the White House that: 

In moderation, smart, strategic tests can help us measure our kids’ progress in school, and it can help them learn. But I also hear from parents who, rightly, worry about too much testing, and from teachers who feel so much pressure to teach to a test that it takes the joy out of teaching and learning, both for them and for the students (Layton).

Even supporters of the modern standardized testing method believe that the amount of testing that students are put through is unnecessary and outrageous. On average, students in the US take 112 mandated standardized tests, from pre-K to high school graduation. Yet, US is not the leading country in education. The US is 21st in reading, 32nd in mathematics, and 23rd in science, compared to the leading country Singapore (Darling-Hammond). Also, some of the students have to take multiple assessment for the same subject, like with AP students. For US History, they have to take the APUSH exam, a regular final exam from their teacher, and an End-of-Course exam, all on the same material. That is too much unnecessary and redundant testing, since the students can just take one of them and have that score count for all three cases.

In the United States, the usual testing format is in multiple choice format with at a minimum of 40-50 questions per section, like reading comprehension, mathematics, writing/language, and possibly science. This multiple-choice format is not the best format for many reasons. Again, speaking from experience, usually on multiple choice tests, when I completely do not know what the “correct answer” is out of the choices given, I just pick one and then move on to the next question. There is a chance that even though I guessed on that question, I picked the correct answer, and the test graders will never know the difference. Therefore, my level of learning is inaccurately shown. This situation can be applied to almost all not all students. 

Another reason that multiple choice tests are not the best format is that these do not reflect how one will solve a real-life situation. It does not necessarily promote higher order, creative thinking, either. Usually in real life instances, the individual looking for a solution isn't given 4 choices and has to pick A, B, C, or D. For example, let’s say an ER doctor receives a patient that was in a car accident. The patient is bleeding and is completely unconscious. That doctor probably will not say “To treat this patient, I can [a] put pressure on the site(s) of bleeding, [b] send the patient in for testing, [c] inject the patient with drugs X, Y, and Z, or [d] send them into the operating room for surgery immediately.” There are more than those four choices on what that doctor can do to treat that patient, and probably more than three of those many choices will be applied at one time. Therefore, this method is not the best method if the tests are supposed to get students to apply their knowledge in realistic situations.

Other formats like essays and open oral and written discussions are better at measuring and promoting deeper thinking in the students. In a Ted Talk Video by Linda Darling-Hammond, she quotes a Texas teacher about standardized testing. The Teacher states “I have seen more students who can pass [the test] but cannot apply those skills to anything if it’s not in the test format… As for high quality teaching, I’m not sure I would call it that…” (Darling-Hammond). The US has been using multiple choice tests so often that the students taking the assessments cannot apply the content that they have “learned” in other ways other than the usual method. Also, Darling-Hammond states that in Singapore, the leading country in education with respect to reading, mathematics, and science, they do not usually test their students with multiple choice questions. They use open discussion, oral exams, group projects, individual projects, and essays to test their students, which helps to stimulate critical, creative thinking. Hopefully the methods of standardized testing can be changed to help students and teachers in the future.

Pertaining to education and standardized testing as of right now, since there has been a recent change in presidents, there may or may not be some helpful reform. President Barack Obama gives a brief message on the problems with standardized testing in a Facebook video, mainly speaking about how students are tested too much and how teacher evaluations are too dependent on standardized test scores. He states the last of the three basic principles that standardized tests should follow in the video, “Tests should be just one source of information used alongside classroom work, and surveys, and other factors to give us an all-around look at how our students and our schools are doing” (Obama). Obama states the other two principles: kids should only take tests that are worth taking, therefore high quality and aimed at good instruction; and that tests should not use too much classroom time, that the tests should enhance teaching and learning. Unlike Obama, even though current President Donald Trump has only been in office for a few months, he has no specific, thought out plan about how to deal with standardized testing reform during his next four years in office. 

Standardized testing is an integral part of the US educational system. There are flaws that have existed for decades, like the achievement gap, and those flaws will take a lot of time to improve the overall educational system.  A Nation at Risk, NCLB, and Race to the Top have been the top three major events in the more recent history of standardized testing, and they have caused a lot of stress and frustration with teachers, administrators, and students. The large increase in high stakes standardized testing since NCLB and the huge impact that standardized test scores have on teacher evaluations needs to be reformed. The United States should lower the amount of testing for K-12 students and follow the testing methods of the leading countries in education to improve the learning experience of the nation’s students in the coming years. Hopefully this much-needed reform will come sooner rather than later.
