How Standardized Testing is Ruining Education

Standardized testing is now a major part of the education system in the United States, as well as many other countries around the world. As a result of this, often students are tested much more than they ever were, and more importance is placed upon test results that anything else. This has lead many people to believe that standardizes tests are ruining the education system, and that students are learning how to pass tests rather than really knowing anything.

It has been debated that recent policy changes in favor of more testing are responsible for the perceived detriment on education. However in reality the idea that testing is ruining the education system goes back a lot further than that. The main basis of this is that students tend to learn a lot more from experience and self learning than they do from being taught how to pass an exam on a particular subject.

One of the main arguments against standard testing is that they can only be done once, and that if a student has an off day or isn't feeling well, then their skills aren't being fairly represented. A student who doesn't get enough sleep for whatever reason, or might have some kind of personal distraction at the time of the exam is also similarly disadvantaged.

Standardized testing also means that there is less room for creativity and originality, which are both things that progress and new ideas depend. With all students being focused on being able to learn the same material that they need for an exam, there is less independent learning going on, and less people will challenge and change the way we think about things. Without students who go on to challenge old ideas and make progress, society will be stuck in a rut and new technologies and research will be held back.

Examinations and testing for the most part don't tend to reflect the actual application of a subject in the real world. For example math papers that contain situations that someone would never have to work out in the real world, such as the distance traveled by two trains in a certain time. Because of this although they can measure a students knowledge of one aspect of a subject, they do not represent a balanced view of the students skills.

Certain learning types will also do better when tested than others, those being people who learn and work best using reading and writing as their main skills. Other people can only learn effectively when hearing things, or experiencing them for themselves. Standard testing only allows for students who are bet at communicating their idea through what they write, and doesn't test any of the other ways of learning at all.

The fact is that some students simply test better than others, and that testing often isn't a fair assessment of a students overall abilities. Some students are better at handling the pressure of exams than others, and some are simply good at tests. This then means that some students can afford not to bother working hard all year, safe in the knowledge that they will excel in the exam. Others of course might be excellent in the classroom, but unable to replicate that form in a test.

Other students, who might be fantastic at all other aspects of the subject, might not be able to perform well under exam conditions. Similarly thousands of students each year buckle under the pressure of the exams looming over them, and don't perform as well as their class work suggests that they might.

Many exams are also rather subjective, and the grade that the student will get might depend in which exam marker is grading them. This is particularly the case for written exams which might contain essay questions such as English or History, but is also somewhat true in all subjects. Although most papers are checked by more than one marker, but the fact is that they will generally agree with what a previous marker has marked. Despite the fact that if they were the ones marking first, they might have given a different amount of marks.

Although there are strict guidelines for all standard tests, one person grading a paper is always going to interpret things differently to someone else. Because of this often all it takes to get a bad grade is to have a poor exam marker. What many students don't usually know is that there is often an appeals procedure where they can have their paper marked again if they and their teachers don't think that their grade is fair and appropriate for the answers that they gave.

Many students today will tell you that they feel as if they are being taught to pass exams, rather then actually learning anything. This of course defeats the entire purpose of education, and will eventually leave our students with little knowledge of a subject at all, only how to pass a test on certain aspects of it.

This of course isn't a good basis of studying a subject in further education, where the assessments are more depends on exams and less coursework based. Also this stops students from having a balanced view of many subjects, and doesn't allow any time for alternative theories, methods or ideas.

On many curriculums there are also areas of the work which although an integral part of the subject, aren't tested very often. These areas of the subjects are being left out more and more as teachers worry more about their students passing than what they are actually going to know at the end of it. Because teachers tend to know from experience what kind of questions are going to come up in standardized testing, they are more likely to practice these than going over new material.