Standardized Testing Should be Banned
Standardized testing is very ineffective and rather harmful to students. It is simply decreasing the quality of education rather than improving.
Standardized testing is unreliable to test student’s performance. According to 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 testings are to ultimately test student’s memorization skills not to test whether they are understanding the classes or not.
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, etc.” Which means, standardised tests are very unjustified to measure the major part of education that makes education itself meaningful.
It is also found that receiving top scores from standardized testings and having students complete the standardised testings is not about being successful. Finland topped the international education (PISA) rankings from 2001-2008, yet has “no external standardised tests used to rank students or schools.” Rather, 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.”
Yet, in the modern days, our society is valuing students who received high marks from these standardized tests. As a result, students are spending at least twelve years of their life studying just to get good grades from these standardized testing. However, considering that these tests never bring any benefits and rather take away students’ precious times, it should be banned.