Why Standardized Testing Hurts Rather than Helps Students  — The CRUSADER (2024)

FAQs

Why standardized testing doesn t help students? ›

Their use encourages a narrowed curriculum, outdated methods of instruction, and harmful practices such as grade retention and tracking. Standardized tests are not designed, and should not be used for promoting or ranking students, evaluating teachers, or grading schools.

In conclusion, standardized testing can have detrimental effects on a child's creativity, learning, and future opportunities. The high stakes attached to standardized tests, particularly in terms of college admissions, can create additional stress and anxiety for students and their families.

If a student performs poorly on a standardized test, they can face increased pressure from their parents and peers to do better and be “smarter.” This can lead to students resenting learning and believing that they are worse than everyone else because of their low score.

Standardized tests measure little of what parents and others want children to learn and experience in schools. They do not measure creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, leadership or empathy. Many schools narrow their focus to the tested subjects of math and reading. Other important subjects are sidelined.

Students often do not receive services during test time because teachers are supervising the testing. Other barriers to success include lack of access to accommodations that are sometimes helpful. These include extra time, text-to-speech tools and Braille (see more below).

This can cause many mental issues as students are studying for long periods of time and stressing about a test. According to soeoline.com, “Standardized testing causes headaches, sleep problems, depression, anxiety, stress and attendance issues”. Standardized testing is also, in some cases, ineffective.

Standardized testing can be biased or unfair, inhibit both the teacher's and the children's creativity and flexibility, affect funding for schools, cause untested subjects to be eliminated from the curriculum, and cause anxiety for children and teachers.

Standardized tests are biased if their test items are weighted in favor of one population over another. Not all tests are biased, but some tests may be biased. Tests that are normed on general populations are less likely to be biased than a test that is normed on a hom*ogeneous or specific population.

Standardized testing creates a barrier between classes because of preparation. It also tests preparedness, not the intellectual intelligence that all students have, but some can't show on standardized tests. Overall, standardized tests do not effectively measure students' intelligence or success at the college level.

What are the main arguments against standardized testing? ›

For one, it means that options will be limited for consumers. Also, standardization may limit producers from providing more value to consumers than their competitors, because they are constrained by the standards.

Standardized exams can show how students improve over time by comparing their scores from year to year. They also allow for straightforward comparisons between students, highlighting changes in their progress.

Stress and its effect on the brain might be one reason that students from low-income neighborhoods tend to fare worse on high-stakes tests. Children are affected by standardized testing, with some seeing their cortisol levels spike on testing days, and others seeing it drop, which might lead them to disengage.

It drives students and teachers away from learning, and at times from school. It narrows, distorts, weakens and impoverishes the curriculum while fostering forms of instruction that fail to engage students or support high-quality learning.

Standardized exams can show how students improve over time by comparing their scores from year to year. They also allow for straightforward comparisons between students, highlighting changes in their progress.

Psychologically, testing causes high anxiety and poor sleep along with other detrimental issues. The design of the traditional multiple choice tests and free-response tests are not complementary to how some student's brain works.

As stated by psychologist Howard Gardner, there are eight types of human intelligence – each representing different ways of how a person best processes information. There are no versions of standardized tests to allow students to use their different strengths.