A Reflection on Standardized Testing

I really enjoyed reading two different opinions on the effectiveness of standardized testing, since they both brought up really important points. On the one hand, Tyler brought up the really important point that standardized tests can only test certain abilities. Speaking specifically about standardized tests such as the SAT, it is true that only certain subjects are covered and in a certain way. With such a wide range of abilities to test for, most standardized tests focus on math, reading, and writing. This is because they are mostly universal subjects, as opposed to subjects like language or sciences, which can have hugely varied curriculums across districts, states, and even countries. Even if standardized tests were able to incorporate other subjects in a fair way, Tyler points out that this is still limited to academic skills. If standardized tests were designed to assess the overall abilities of a person, then they would be ineffective for that reason. However, as Jonah touches on briefly, standardized tests aren’t meant to determine a person’s character; tests like the SAT are only meant to evaluate very specific skills that are seen as important to schools all over the world. An important point that was not brought up is the fact that standardized tests are extremely helpful to very large, competitive schools that need to narrow down the list of applicants. Popular colleges such as Harvard and MIT, for example, get way too many applications every year to pay close attention to every single one. To solve this problem, they use SAT or ACT scores from applicants to ease the admissions process. Without that option, they would have to enlist an army of admissions personnel to get anywhere with applications. In favor of standardized testing, Jonah cited a lot of numbers from polls that seemingly express support for standardized tests. Unfortunately, polls aren’t always an accurate representation of the overall population, and there was no mention in either blog post of how students feel about standardized tests. For many students, standardized tests are extremely stressful, since they have such a huge effect on what schools they can get into, and they are being compared to their peers. Additionally, neither blog mentioned that in some schools, the curriculum is changed for teachers to “teach to the test”, which takes time away from other important material that they could have taught using that time. Arguably, this means that students are being tested not on their knowledge, but their test-taking skills and ability to deal with stress. Even if standardized tests weren’t originally designed to test the ability to deal with stress, it is still true that dealing with stress is an important life skill. Overall, while standardized tests may not be enjoyable and don’t assess every single ability of a student, they do test important skills and are crucial to the admissions process for universities and colleges.

In response to the following blogs: Tyler's blog: http://tmahlmann.blogspot.com/2015/02/blog-debate-1st-argument.html?m=1   and     Jonah's blog: https://jonahhelmer.wordpress.com