Are standardized tests good way to measure student's mastery of course material?
I extremely disagree that standardized tests are good option to evaluate the student’s knowledge of the course material. Are standardized tests fair and helpful evaluation tools? Do tests reflect current knowledge about how students learn? Do multiple-choice or short-answer tests measure important student achievement? Are test scores "reliable"?Test driven, or force-fed, learning can not enrich and promote the traits necessary for life success.
John Holt, in his essay “School is bad for children” says that school makes the student less curious and less resourceful. I agree with this point because before children start their formal education, they are more independent and likely to be creative. The school makes them think in a monotonous way, by instilling the lie that, they should follow the standard steps and the test scores are what really matter. Besides that, John Holt argues that school enforces the idea on students that being wrong is crime and they should only run after the right answers. I certify this point, as the main reason of tests are to find out whether students have got the “right answer”. But sadly, tests should measure the analytical and creative skills of students not whether they get the right answers or not. Furthermore, John Holt asserts that schools bring anxiety and suspicion in the student’s mind. Certainly, the pressure of scoring high marks and finding the right answer makes the student very nervous and mentally anxious. Bob Sternberg, a scholar who is trying to change the traditional test-taking system shares that, as a young child, he scored less marks in his subjects because of anxiety, but teachers thought that he was retarded, and due to that impression, he himself felt that he was stupid, and was very unmotivated to make any progress. However, he proved them wrong, as he became inspired by those who believed that tests don’t generally prove how much the student knows.
I am against the standardized testing method because these techniques were developed 100 years before, during the 1900s. At that time, the students were homogenous, mainly, males, white and from upper class families. From that time to now, things have changed tremendously, the population of students has increased and they are culturally diverse. What if we use the medical testing system that was 100 years old? Obviously, many people would die. The skills we need to survive are different than those we needed in 1900s, we need not only memory and analytical skills that tests measure, but also practical, creative, flexibility of adaptation and ethical skills. We need to upgrade testing system to test all the required skills in a student to live in modern time.
Students have to be tested not about their expertise in contents of their text-books or curriculum but about their survival skills that range from thinking capacity, decision-making ability, and resourcefulness. Though I disagree with the test-taking system at school, I don’t mean to say that they are completely useless. They do serve some purpose and even measure the knowledge of students to some extent but what I mean to say is that, they are outdated. They do not acknowledge the fact that every student learns differently, at different rates and with different styles, so they may not benefit from the same way of testing everyone. The tests should be created in such a way that a student can connect what he/she already knows with what he/she is trying to learn. The failure of standardized testing system is that teachers are teaching students to score high on test than to teach them to actually think and make meaning of their world.
-Sris <3
John Holt, in his essay “School is bad for children” says that school makes the student less curious and less resourceful. I agree with this point because before children start their formal education, they are more independent and likely to be creative. The school makes them think in a monotonous way, by instilling the lie that, they should follow the standard steps and the test scores are what really matter. Besides that, John Holt argues that school enforces the idea on students that being wrong is crime and they should only run after the right answers. I certify this point, as the main reason of tests are to find out whether students have got the “right answer”. But sadly, tests should measure the analytical and creative skills of students not whether they get the right answers or not. Furthermore, John Holt asserts that schools bring anxiety and suspicion in the student’s mind. Certainly, the pressure of scoring high marks and finding the right answer makes the student very nervous and mentally anxious. Bob Sternberg, a scholar who is trying to change the traditional test-taking system shares that, as a young child, he scored less marks in his subjects because of anxiety, but teachers thought that he was retarded, and due to that impression, he himself felt that he was stupid, and was very unmotivated to make any progress. However, he proved them wrong, as he became inspired by those who believed that tests don’t generally prove how much the student knows.
I am against the standardized testing method because these techniques were developed 100 years before, during the 1900s. At that time, the students were homogenous, mainly, males, white and from upper class families. From that time to now, things have changed tremendously, the population of students has increased and they are culturally diverse. What if we use the medical testing system that was 100 years old? Obviously, many people would die. The skills we need to survive are different than those we needed in 1900s, we need not only memory and analytical skills that tests measure, but also practical, creative, flexibility of adaptation and ethical skills. We need to upgrade testing system to test all the required skills in a student to live in modern time.
Students have to be tested not about their expertise in contents of their text-books or curriculum but about their survival skills that range from thinking capacity, decision-making ability, and resourcefulness. Though I disagree with the test-taking system at school, I don’t mean to say that they are completely useless. They do serve some purpose and even measure the knowledge of students to some extent but what I mean to say is that, they are outdated. They do not acknowledge the fact that every student learns differently, at different rates and with different styles, so they may not benefit from the same way of testing everyone. The tests should be created in such a way that a student can connect what he/she already knows with what he/she is trying to learn. The failure of standardized testing system is that teachers are teaching students to score high on test than to teach them to actually think and make meaning of their world.
-Sris <3
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