Research Study
Standardized Testing: CONS
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The following paragraph, which is provided by ProCon.Org, offers twenty arguments against using Standardized Testing in education
http://standardizedtests.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=6521
Standardized testing has not improved student achievement. After No Child Left Behind (NCLB) passed in 2002, the US slipped from 18th in the world in math on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to 31st place in 2009, with a similar drop in science and no change in reading. A May 26, 2011, National Research Council report found no evidence test-based incentive programs are working: "Despite using them for several decades, policymakers and educators do not yet know how to use test-based incentives to consistently generate positive effects on achievement and to improve education."
Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance. A 2001 study published by the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-over-year test score improvements were temporary and "caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning..."
Standardized tests are unfair and discriminatory against non English speakers and students with special needs. English language learners take tests in English before they have mastered the language. Special education students take the same tests as other children, receiving few of the accommodations usually provided to them as part of their Individualized Education Plans (IEP)
Standardized tests measure only a small portion of what makes education meaningful. According to late education researcher Gerald W. Bracey, PhD, qualities that standardized tests cannot measure include "creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, resourcefulness, sense of beauty, sense of wonder, honesty, integrity."
"Teaching to the test" is replacing good teaching practices with "drill n' kill" rote learning. A five-year University of Maryland study completed in 2007 found "the pressure teachers were feeling to 'teach to the test'" since NCLB was leading to "declines in teaching higher-order thinking, in the amount of time spent on complex assignments, and in the actual amount of high cognitive content in the curriculum."
NCLB tests are drastically narrowing the curriculum. A national 2007 study by the Center on Education Policy reported that since 2001, 44% of school districts had reduced the time spent on science, social studies and the arts by an average of 145 minutes per week in order to focus on reading and math. A 2007 survey of 1,250 civics, government, and social studies teachers showed that 75% of those teaching current events less often cited standardized tests as the reason.
Instruction time is being consumed by monotonous test preparation. Some schools allocate more than a quarter of the year's instruction to test prep. [Kozol] After New York City's reading and math scores plunged in 2010, many schools imposed extra measures to avoid being shut down, including daily two and a half hour prep sessions and test practice on vacation days. On Sep. 11, 2002, students at Monterey High School in Lubbock, TX, were prevented from discussing the first anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks because they were too busy with standardized test preparation.
Standardized tests are not objective. A paper published in the Fall 2002 edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Human Resources stated that scores vary due to subjective decisions made during test design and administration: "Simply changing the relative weight of algebra and geometry in NAEP (the National Assessment of Educational Progress) altered the gap between black and white students."
Standardized testing causes severe stress in younger students. According to education researcher Gregory J. Cizek, anecdotes abound "illustrating how testing... produces gripping anxiety in even the brightest students, and makes young children vomit or cry, or both." On Mar. 14, 2002, the Sacramento Bee reported that "test-related jitters, especially among young students, are so common that the Stanford-9 exam comes with instructions on what to do with a test booklet in case a student vomits on it."
Older students do not take NCLB-mandated standardized tests seriously because they do not affect their grades. An English teacher at New Mexico's Valley High School said in Aug. 2004 that many juniors just "had fun" with the tests, making patterns when filling in the answer bubbles: "Christmas tree designs were popular. So were battleships and hearts."
Testing is expensive and costs have increased since NCLB, placing a burden on state education budgets. According to the Texas Education Agency, the state spent $9 million in 2003 to test students, while the cost to Texas taxpayers from 2009 through 2012 is projected to be around $88 million per year.
The billion dollar testing industry is notorious for making costly and time-consuming scoring errors. NCS Pearson, which has a $254 million contract to administer Florida's Comprehensive Assessment Test, delivered the 2010 results more than a month late and their accuracy was challenged by over half the state's superintendents. After errors and distribution problems in 2004-2005, Hawaii replaced test publisher Harcourt with American Institutes for Research, but the latter had to re-grade 98,000 tests after students received scores for submitting blank test booklets.
The multiple-choice format used on standardized tests is an inadequate assessment tool. It encourages a simplistic way of thinking in which there are only right and wrong answers, which doesn't apply in real-world situations. The format is also biased toward male students, who studies have shown adapt more easily to the game-like point scoring of multiple-choice questions.
America is facing a "creativity crisis," as standardized testing and rote learning "dumb down" curricula and jeopardize the country's economic future. A 2010 College of William & Mary study found Americans' scores on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking have been dropping since 1990, and researcher Kyung-Hee Kim lays part of the blame on the increase in standardized testing: "If we neglect creative students in school because of the structure and the testing movement... then they become underachievers."
Finland topped the international education (PISA) rankings from 2001-2008, yet has "no external standardized tests used to rank students or schools," according to Stanford University researchers Linda Darling-Hammond and Laura McCloskey. Success has been achieved using "assessments that encourage students to be active learners who can find, analyze, and use information to solve problems in novel situations."
Excessive testing may teach children to be good at taking tests, but does not prepare them for productive adult lives. China displaced Finland at the top of the 2009 PISA rankings because, as explained by Jiang Xueqin, Deputy Principal of Peking University High School, "Chinese schools are very good at preparing their students for standardized tests. For that reason, they fail to prepare them for higher education and the knowledge economy." China is trying to depart from the "drill and kill" test prep that Chinese educators admit has produced only "competent mediocrity."
Using test scores to reward and punish teachers and schools encourages them to cheat the system for their own gain. A 2011 USA Today investigation of six states and Washington DC found 1,610 suspicious anomalies in year-over-year test score gains. A confidential Jan. 2009 memo, prepared for the DC school system by an outside analyst and uncovered in Apr. 2013, revealed that 191 teachers in 70 DC public schools were "implicated in possible testing infractions," and nearly all the teachers at one DC elementary school "had students whose test papers showed high numbers of wrong-to-right erasures," according to USA Today. 178 Atlanta public school teachers and administrators from 44 schools were found to be cheating on standardized tests according to a July 2011 state report. At one school, teachers attended "weekend pizza parties" to correct students' answers, according to ABC News. Ultimately in Apr. 2015, 11 of those district employees were convicted of racketeering, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison
Standardized tests are an imprecise measure of teacher performance, yet they are used to reward and punish teachers. According to a Sep. 2010 report by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, over 17% of Houston teachers ranked in the top category on the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills reading test were ranked among the two lowest categories on the equivalent Stanford Achievement Test. The results "were based on the same students, tested in the same subject, at approximately the same time of year, using two different tests."
Each state develops its own NCLB standards and assessments, providing no basis for meaningful comparison. A student sitting for the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) is asked a completely different set of questions from a child in California taking the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) test, and while the former includes essay questions, the latter is entirely multiple-choice
Open-ended questions on standardized tests are often graded by under-paid temporary workers with no educational training. Scorers make $11-$13 per hour and need only a bachelor’s degree, not necessarily related to education. As one former test scorer stated, "all it takes to become a test scorer is a bachelor’s degree, a lack of a steady job, and a willingness to throw independent thinking out the window.