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How Well Do You Think Standardized Tests Measure Your Abilities?
Standardized tests have been universally embraced as one of the major ways of assessing students’ performance. While the government gauges teachers’ effectiveness, the public uses the learners’ results to ensure that both the teachers and the government are held accountable. Thus, there is a high probability that the teaching pedagogy emphasizes improving the students' performance rather than nurturing their abilities. The paper presents a discussion about the validity of standardized tests in measuring the students' abilities. Although standardized tests normalize assessment tools, the need for high performance to ascertain accountability and the inequalities among students undermine the capacity for the tests to measure the students’ abilities.
Standardized tests were created to measure the performance of the majority of the population. In the United States, the No Child Left Behind legislation was implemented to reduce inequalities within the school systems. However, the standardized tests neglect the needs of the minority group which reduces its effectiveness to assess the learners’ abilities. According to Kim and Zabelina, there are great discrepancies between the performance of ethnic minority and non-minority groups (130). For instance, a Scholastic Aptitude Test included the word "regatta†that was known to the majority of Caucasians but many African Americans had difficulties translating the word (Kim and Zabelina 130). Such tests produce inaccurate scores that limit access to educational and career opportunities for ethnic minority groups.
The common notion is that academic performance improves the students’ cognitive skills. In fact, learners who attain better results in school become successful in life as compared to their counterparts (Finn et al. 7). On the other hand, schools’ performance differs greatly. The classroom quality including the teacher effectiveness and the class size differs from one school to the other. While performance is associated with positive socioeconomic outcomes in life, research shows that students from both high and low-performing schools do not defer in terms of cognitive skills (Finn et al. 7). Thus, students’ cognitive skills do not entirely depend on the ability of the student to perform well in the standardized tests.
Standardized tests are associated with negative effects on both the teacher and the student. According to Brockmeier et al., teachers receive pressure from their district supervisors and principles to ensure that students perform exceptionally (100). Similarly, students strive to attain high grades in order to attain educational and career opportunities. Thus, the teachers may encourage students to cheat in the tests or spend more time preparing the learners for the tests than is required (Brockmeier et al. 100). Unfortunately, the time that would be useful in nurturing the students’ abilities is diverted to examination preparation which undermines the effectiveness of the standardized tests.
Standardized tests have been pervasively used to gauge the students’ abilities. However, research shows that standardized tests favor non-minority groups which limit access to educational and career opportunities for minority groups. Similarly, while high-performing students from different schools may have positive socioeconomic outcomes in life, their level of cognitive skills does not differ significantly. Teachers receive pressure from their supervisors and principals and the learners’ are pressurized to improve their grades in order to attain educational and career opportunities. Thus, time that would be useful in nurturing the students’ abilities is diverted to examination preparation undermining the effectiveness of the standardized tests.
Works Cited
Brockmeier, Lantry L. et al. "Teachers’ Beliefs About the Effects of High Stakes Testing". Journal of Education and Human Development, vol 3, no. 4, 2014. American Research Institute for Policy Development, doi:10.15640/jehd.v3n4a9.
Finn, Amy S. et al. "Cognitive Skills, Student Achievement Tests, and Schools". Psychol Sci., vol 25, no. 3, 2014. PMC, doi:10.1177/0956797613516008. Accessed 20 Dec 2018.
Kim, Kyung Hee, and Darya Zabelina. "Cultural Bias in Assessment: Can Creativity Assessment Help?" International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, vol 6, no. 2, 2015, Accessed 20 Dec 2018.
