Standardized tests are the most common way for schools and colleges to measure student achievement. Students take standardized tests to show their mastery of the curriculum, and schools use the results to help determine whether students should move on to the next grade or move on to college.
Standardized tests are an integral part of education in the United States. They are used to measure the knowledge and skills of students in academic courses and to determine if they have mastered the curricula. They are frequently used as a criterion for student promotion, for determining the amount of money a school district needs to spend on gifted students, and for choosing the most qualified candidates for certain jobs.
Being good at something is a wonderful thing—but not everyone is. This is something that has always bothered me, as I went through my primary and secondary education, not because I wasn’t learned enough, but rather because I didn’t take standardized tests. I was a good student, and I was working hard to pursue a career in engineering at the time.. Read more about what is the purpose of standardized testing and let us know what you think.Few education issues generate as much excitement among parents, teachers, and principals as discussions about the use of student test scores to assess the quality of state, district, school, and sometimes even teacher education systems. But what are standardized tests anyway, what are they for and why are there so many of them? What makes a test standardized? The test is standardized, i.e., all participants must answer the same set of carefully selected questions. This allows those studying the results to make comparisons between groups of students.
The questions on these tests are usually multiple choice or true/false, as this increases the likelihood that the results will be fair and unbiased, with less bias or favoritism in assigning the answers. Taking a standardized test and interpreting the results requires a lot of diverse knowledge in the areas of curriculum, child development, cultural and linguistic differences, statistics, and a research area called psychometrics.
Why do students have to take so many tests? If you think about it, standardized tests have been a part of our lives for a long time. When you take your child to the doctor, they will be assessed using a standard checklist: How does the child’s weight compare to other children of the same age and meet developmental milestones? When you apply for a driver’s license, your state’s motor vehicle office will ask you to take a standardized test to see if you know the rules of the road. When you apply for citizenship, you must take a standardized test to see if you understand the basic principles of the U.S. government. Similarly, standardized tests are extremely useful to educators and their institutions in assessing progress and meeting students’ needs.
For example, half of the states in the United States require a test to prepare for kindergarten. When students apply to college, they typically take the ACT or SAT (although some institutions are now waiving this requirement in the interest of fairer admission). If you want to go to law school, take the LSAT. If you want to study medicine, take the MCAT. There is even a PISA test used by 79 countries to compare national education systems. (In 2018, the U.S. ranked 13th for reading and 36th for math). However, there can be too much of a good thing, including too much testing. The assessments your child undergoes during the school year have several purposes.
For example, a teacher may administer a social studies test to check whether students have understood the material he or she has been teaching in that unit; this allows the teacher to determine whether repetition is necessary. The principal may decide to test all students in the class if there is a trend of declining math skills; this will help determine if the instructional materials are working or if the teachers need additional training. Some school districts use standardized diagnostic tests several times a year to clarify, for example, what individual students are learning. For example, NWEA’s MAP tests or Curriculum Associates’ iReady tests. In addition, federal law requires states to test students in grades 3 through 8 for reading and math once a year, and once in high school.
Why is the federal government involved in standardized testing? There are good schools in America, but we have long struggled to raise standards. In 1983, a bipartisan group of educators and officials wrote a report titled A Nation at Risk, which stated that if an unfriendly foreign power attempted to impose on America the poor education of today, we might consider it an act of war. Not much has changed. Tom Loveless, an education expert, said: What surprises me is the stability of American results [in PISA].
The numbers were always bad. Another standardized test administered to representative groups of students (the National Assessment of Educational Progress or Nation Report Card) shows that two-thirds of children cannot read. America’s lagging behind other countries in the world prompted the federal government to impose standardized tests to improve teaching and learning. A 1965 law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which made additional funding for disadvantaged students contingent on meeting state requirements, was reauthorized in 2003 as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
To receive additional federal funding, states were required to assess student performance each year (in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school) using standardized tests. They also had to test the results for historically neglected groups, such as. B. students with disabilities, English language learners, and low-income children, report. Each group – as well as schools, districts, and states – had to meet a benchmark called adequate yearly progress (AYP).
Why are standardized tests so controversial? They used to be undisputed! But they only became so when the federal government intervened and American educators and leaders began to worry about preparing high school students for higher education and the job market. Many point to No Child Left Behind as the moment when standardized testing became controversial. Sometimes transparency can be painful – for example, test results quickly revealed a huge achievement gap between students of color and white students.
In response, we began to take student achievement and the achievement gap between rich and poor, black and white children more seriously. Instead of limiting themselves to ranking scores, states have begun using test results to evaluate the quality of schools, districts, departments of education and even teachers. This raised a number of questions:
- How come some students in this school are bad at math while the students in the other school are great at math?
- Are textbooks the culprit?
- Is that the director?
- Does one school support teachers better than another?
- Does a school have more homeless students, more students with disabilities, or more students learning English?
In some cases, teachers and administrators felt unfairly attacked. Parents are sometimes unpleasantly surprised that their children don’t learn as much as they thought they would. There may be a perception (sometimes accurate) that standardized tests are used to unfairly punish favored teachers or administrators, or that test scores deny students desirable opportunities, such as admission to specialized schools or programs.
An example of NCLB’s over-obsession is the absurdly ambitious goal of 100% graduation for the 2013-2014 school year. In response, states lowered standards and made testing easier so they could continue to receive federal funds. In addition, NCLB has imposed unrealistic requirements on schools serving high-needs schools, leading to what many educators have described as a toxic culture of test prep that has taken the joy out of school and learning.
For these and other reasons, the law was reauthorized in 2015 and No Child Left Behind was renamed the Every Student Succeeds Act, which reduces the role of the federal government by doing away with annual benchmarks and letting states decide how to hold themselves accountable. But states do need to inform the public of individual district and school test results so that it is clear which schools are succeeding and which are not. With this information, we hope to improve services across the country, especially for historically low-income students.
Are standardized tests racist? America suffers from structural inequalities, and one of the most dangerous and pervasive inequalities is racism, which permeates every aspect of life, from poorly maintained housing to poor health care to food insecurity to fewer resources for schools that educate students of color. Standardized tests are no different: A century ago, for example, American psychologist Lewis Terman falsely and insultingly claimed that IQ tests showed that African-Americans, Latinos, Indians and Mexicans were not as smart as whites.
There are other ways in which tests can be biased. In the 1990s, a famous example was provided by an SAT question that asked for the best analogy between the words runner and marathon. The answer was the words rowers and regatta, a vocabulary that perhaps only rich teenagers know. It was an excellent example of socio-economic bias. But standardized testing can also be a way to overcome inherent biases. If teacher opinion is the only criterion for getting students into gifted programs, black and brown students may be overlooked. Research shows that more students of color are selected for acceleration when standardized tests are used instead.
Meanwhile, testing companies have launched programs to develop culturally, racially, and socioeconomically appropriate tests and learning tools. For example, Pearson, a major textbook publisher and provider of standardized tests, released an editorial policy in 2021 that addresses race, ethnicity, equity, and inclusion. Standardized testing can indeed perpetuate racial inequities and systematic racial biases. But without it, we are at the mercy of subjective judgments. That’s why the National Urban League has led a coalition of civil rights, social justice, disability and education groups in an appeal to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to require states to maintain the schedule of standardized testing during a coronavirus pandemic.
You wrote, In order to understand the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and ensure that this pandemic does not jeopardize the future of students across the country, we need to collect accurate, objective, and comparable data that tells us something about the quality of education during this period, including data from state-level evaluations. What does standardized testing have to do with civil rights? Civil rights have long focused on issues of fairness and equality. In the world of education, equity means putting systems in place to ensure that every child has the same opportunity to succeed, regardless of family income or skin color.
There are many ways to ensure that these wishes are not fulfilled. But standardized test scores are one of the clearest and most compelling indicators that civil rights activists can use to demonstrate the gross inequities of our current education system. Example: A Brightbeam report found that 70 percent of white students in San Francisco are good at math, while the difference for black students is only 12 percent, or 58 points. This pattern – white students significantly outperforming black students – is prevalent in many parts of the country and demonstrates the problem the United States faces in improving outcomes and building equity into its schools. 
If you want to know how your state and/or city treats students of different races, check out Why Proficiency Matters, a simple online tool for mapping racial achievement differences (also called achievement gaps). To reduce these large differences, we need standardized estimates. They provide a clear way to assess how well our school systems are helping children at risk. The information obtained from these tests will provide states and school districts with the data they need to create more equitable systems.
This practice is fully consistent with the goals of the civil rights movement: to provide equal educational opportunity and protection of the law to all students, regardless of race, religion, or income level. That’s why everyone from a teacher in Kentucky to Michelle Obama to Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump sees education as the most important civil rights issue of our time. Why does the federal government want every child tested? Can’t we just check a sample of kids to see how the school district is doing? We already do this through what is called the National Report Card, a biennial sample of students in each state.
This is very useful! However, children who do not participate in the NAEP may be left in the dark, and the NAEP does not give us the detailed information about an individual student’s performance that more targeted and inclusive tests can provide. It is important to note that the NAEP does not impose consequences for poor performance. It should be used as a benchmark to assess the overall academic health of our country, state by state. This guarantees the authenticity and comparability of the results.
How can we ensure that states and districts are actually working to improve education for disadvantaged students? That’s where the federal government comes to the rescue. After all, our current national education law is called the Every Student Succeeds Act, not the Some Student Succeeds Act. If a state has too many students who do not meet expectations for math or reading, the federal government requires that state to designate districts, schools, and specific groups of students who need additional support.
If states tested only a subset of children, there would be no reliable way to determine which schools and districts needed improvement. Most importantly, there would be no reliable way to identify marginalized groups of students who are not receiving the support and instruction they need to succeed. Therefore, each state should set ambitious goals for the academic progress of students, including those with the lowest performance, and report progress against those goals by race, income, and disability. And how are these schools, districts, or student groups defined? Through standardized testing.
Of course, no test is perfect. But if you look at the big system, you can only see general trends. It’s easy to say: All of our children are doing well, even if some are not. Can we really be confident that these tests accurately measure student achievement? No test can measure a student’s math and reading skills. That has never been claimed, which is why we don’t use standard state assessments to get grades on your child’s report card, for example. But these tests can be applied to different groups of students in the school and can help principals identify students who are struggling or whose instruction needs to be adjusted.
In the world of education policy, this idea of requiring schools to improve when data from standardized tests show they are failing is called accountability. And it’s an essential part of civil rights. We need to acknowledge the problem and then act, whether it’s Rosa Parks sitting on a white bus or education activists in Nashville fighting a literacy crisis where seven out of 10 third graders can’t read at their level. Suppose that at your child’s elementary school, all fifth graders take the state reading test and this group scores lower than the fifth graders from the year before.
Is it because there are more students with learning disabilities this year? Were there too many snow days? Has the district implemented a new reading program that may slow down performance? Do teachers not get as many recommendations as in previous years? Did the school increase class sizes last year to prevent students from getting more attention? Using the results of the standardized tests, we can determine the causes and thus guide the educators to the right solutions. Without the test, teachers and parents would not have known there was a problem. If you can’t identify the problem, you can’t solve it.
As Katrina Miller of Educational Partnerships explains, We need to overcome the fear of data in education. As much reliable data as possible helps us better understand the needs of students. Doctors prescribe a full blood test to get an idea of how the entire human system is functioning. We need the same mindset in education. I trust my child’s teacher to know when my child is in trouble. Why stress him out with a test? Our teachers certainly have a strong sense of student success. But teachers must work in a much larger system over which they have no control.
It is very difficult to effect change in large institutions like school districts or even state departments of education, especially when these institutions have been serving the same groups of children for generations. To change these systems, fixed statistics are needed, which are provided by standardized tests. We have to work hard to improve the systems. And even if all goes well for your child, much depends on our national effort to improve the performance of our schools where they have long failed. How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect standard testing? Many agree that forcing children to be tested during an epidemic year would be pointless and even cruel.
The Trump administration gave states early permission to waive all standardized spring tests for 2020. The following year, many expected the Biden administration to do the same, as many students were still learning at a distance and schools were struggling to keep up with year-round learning. But the Biden administration responded to the concerns of civil rights and education rights groups by requiring states to continue testing precisely because this was a very difficult year and many children would fall behind academically.
However, the states have been given a great deal of flexibility in how and who they will test in 2021, so we are frankly losing two years of data. This is undoubtedly a major hurdle for districts trying to diagnose the effectiveness of their schools and programs, and it removes a crucial tool from the arsenal of civil rights advocates. What are the possibilities for activism?
- Understand what tests children take and why.
Become an informed consumer. Information is power. To be an effective advocate, you must understand the purpose of certain tests and how your school uses their results. Is this for driver training? Is it to measure trends in the state? Is this necessary to comply with federal regulations? As part of the Biden administration’s rescue plan, states will spend $125 billion on elementary and secondary schools to help students catch up after a year of school closures. One of the requirements is that your state must develop a plan for assessing students during this pandemic year.
You cannot hide from the loss of knowledge! We need this data to develop crisis management plans. So go to school board meetings, write or call your legislators, and demand that your state’s 2021 assessment plan – whether it involves substitute tests, delaying regular state tests, or using shortened versions of tests – be implemented fairly, with an emphasis on service to students and families, and fearlessly seeking accurate information.
- Get the message out that standardized testing helps defend civil rights.
Even if you are not concerned about your own child’s progress, remember that without standardized testing, we would not be able to measure the achievement gap that exposes the great inequities in our public education system. Our schools are not able to serve large groups of children equally, so supporting standardized testing is part of the effort to provide equity for children. Develop initiatives to increase the acceptance of testing in your community and increase understanding of the important role that testing plays in educational equity.
- Urge your state, district or school to improve standardized testing.
While today’s standardized tests are important for closing learning gaps, they are still in the stone age. To minimize the time and money spent on testing, public education systems must invest in innovation in our testing infrastructure. There is technology to automatically score essay questions, but we don’t use it.
Technology exists that allows us to tailor test questions to each student’s knowledge level, but we don’t use it. There is technology that allows us to get test results within 24 hours, but we don’t use it. Activists can demand that their state’s leaders invest in innovations to make testing less stressful and more beneficial for students, teachers, parents, schools and states.Standardized tests (also known as exams) are a way to gauge how well a student has learned a particular subject. Standardized tests typically include multiple choice questions to measure a student’s knowledge of the course material.
Some schools also administer non-standardized tests that require a student to demonstrate their skills and knowledge in a particular subject.. Read more about alternatives to standardized testing and let us know what you think.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are standardized tests and why do we use them?
Standardized tests are important for a variety of reasons. First, they are the primary way that we grade students and teachers. Second, they are the backbone of the admissions process at universities, colleges, and even some high schools. Third, they are used by teachers to provide feedback to students. Students can’t be expected to learn all that they need to know in the classroom if there is no way to gauge their progress. Finally, standardized tests are one method to measure how well a state is preparing its students for the future. Standardized tests play an important role in the American education system.
They are used to measure achievement in schools and to identify students with the need for additional help. The tests are based on Common Core State Standards, developed by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and are intended to ensure a common standard among states.
Why do we need standardized testing?
Standardized testing is the way we’ve been testing knowledge for over a century. The process of assessing the knowledge, skills, and abilities of different groups of students is called standardized testing, and it’s used in different states, districts, and schools for different purposes. Over the past 50 years, standardized tests have undergone a series of changes and revisions, both large and small. They have been updated and standardized, but there still are some tests that test certain skills in a way that is not standardized, which can lead to inflated scores and the misapplication of harmful policy to students.
Standardized tests are a necessary part of our education system. However, standardized tests have been rolled out in various countries for decades without any significant improvements in education. And, in many cases, the tests themselves are responsible for poor results.
