Standardized Tests
Standardized testing has long been a controversial educational issue in the United States. While there are many arguments for and against the implementation of this sort of testing, the two that stand out above all others are the following. Proponents of these tests point out how reliable and valid facts and statistics can be drawn from the results of these tests that show administrators, the government and the population how a group of students compares to another group of students. Opponents bring up one of the main issues of the No Child Left Behind Act, which is to say that teachers may feel pressure to teach to the test instead of to teach to the student’s needs or to the subject’s inherent requirements. Of course, behind that complaint lies the idea that standardized tests cannot encompass the inherent requirements of each subject taught, though test makers are trying to get closer to that goal. The SATs, a standardized test required of high school students wishing to attend a college or university, recently underwent changes to include a writing section among the vocabulary and mathematics sections that already existed on the test. SAT subject tests are also recent in the past decade and a half, and seek to test a student’s abilities in a specific subject matter. However, criticism of these types of tests continues to rest on the notion that different students learn best from different methods, and the same can be said for testing the abilities of those students.
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