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Standardized Tests
Anthony Smith
UMGC
Introduction
Taking into account that there's a need to determine successful and effective approaches to gauge scholastic accomplishments, a government sanctioned test is certainly not a reasonable appraisal. This is remained constant despite the fact that The developing worry on government sanctioned tests gives a room that makes an evaluation instrument that will permit people to adequately comprehend the information and abilities that a given understudy has in a specific substance region.
A standardized test is an examination that is administered with a standard method and scored. These standardized tests include the achievement tests and the aptitude tests. Aptitude tests are used to predict the performance of students in an ensuing education setting. Standardized achievement tests on the other hand are tests whose scores are used by the parents, the school, and the citizens to identify the effectiveness of a school (Madaus, 2012). Examples of such tests include Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, or Metropolitan Achievement Tests. Recently standardized testing has ignited a worldwide conversation and debate, where a significant number of parents are concerned about the judgment their children receive based on partaking in certain tests. In many of these cases, the tests do not correlate to the actual learning needed for a successful career outcome. Both the private schools and the public have been using a standardized method of assessment. For example, in public schools in New York students have to undergo several tests to ensure they meet the federal and state standards (Strauss, 2021).
The growing concern on standardized tests provides a room that creates an assessment tool that will allow individuals to effectively understand the knowledge and skills that a given student possesses in a particular content area. The interpretation should be referenced normally to help a student with knowledge and skills be easily comparable to those who are in the national sample and are of the same age and grade level. Despite this, children in the same grade level possesses a significant amount of knowledge and skills (Madaus, 2012). The size of the content that a standardized test should have also made it difficult for developers of the tests. This is because the test will be longer if it covered all the skills and knowledge. As a result, there’s a need to derive effective and efficient ways to measure academic achievements.
Standardized tests are used to compare a student’s achievement, this makes it desirable for the teachers, parents, and other stakeholders involved. For example, several parents will often compare their child to the performance of the state peers to see if they meet the benchmark. These statewide standard tests help parents also identify the overall performance of the school and teachers who get to evaluate students and programs achievement or their ability. Despite this benchmarking advantage, standardized exams pose a major concern. This is because the tests often encourage teaching that is more geared towards the tests and passing the exam at the expense of in-depth coverage of the subject and creativity. Tests such as multiple tests fail to assess writing skills.
A teacher’s performance is tracked using the success of the student making the teacher’s advancement dependent on the student’s performance in the academic. On the contrary, teachers are faced with questions to explain when students fail to perform. Ethically this should not be the case since there are many reasons for the failed performance of the students on the standard and teacher assessment tests. Some of the reasons may be there is a poor alignment between the content taught and the one in the tests of the teacher has easy grading criteria. Students may also fail since they are not familiar with the items on the test, they have test anxiety, or even became sick during the exam time (Popham, 2016). Due to this, there is a need for a more harmonized form of assessment that will ensure there is a form of fairness in testing. An example of this is the use of portfolio-based assessment where records of the performance of a student are kept and are used to determine their skills.
Standardized Tests
Standardized exams are created by a team, usually a collection of teachers or test experts who consult other classroom teachers or faculty in the university when generating the exams. The tests are administered to everyone in a standard manner. Students are meant to respond to similar questions and receive similar instructions, also have the same time limit for the exam. An Open scoring criterion is used for the test. These tests are usually designed to be administered to students within the nation, state, province, or across nations. The teachers assist in administering the tests and use the test manuals in scoring. For example, teachers will remove posters and charts in classrooms, read instructions, and answer student questions in a specific way during exams. The idea behind this is that data collected from the tests can be used to improve schools, education methods, or teaching practices. This data can also be used by the community to demonstrate the well-performing school (Strauss, 2021).
Overuse and misuse of standard tests endogenous teaching and learning. A recent study has shown that when standard exams become the primary factor for schools to be held accountable, their use narrows, hence being the definition of curriculum and focus instruction. Accountability leads to massive pressure of performing which can result in the misuse and misinterpretation of standard tests. Teaching for the exam disapproves the higher-order learning. Teachers are allowed to be taught while there is a limited amount of information that the students learn throughout the years. There may be the possibility of using standard tests without the content determining the curriculum but still what is tested is only what is taught. The subject tested also often becomes the model of how to teach. Although testing for academic attributes exists in standard tests, schools rarely measure creativity, curiosity, ethical reflection or imagination, or any valuable attributes. On the contrary, the tests often focus more on an individual's identified academic skills and less on character or moral development. Hence the tests are very narrow and labeling children without these skills as failures should not be upheld.
The most widespread experience of students is the stress that comes with standard tests. Students spend days in revision and cramming materials for the tests and on the test day they are required to reflect on what they have been taught. The student’s performance also has a lethal influence on the general school performance. Further to the stress, the tests have a negative influence on the students as well. Though it is highly stressed in schools, students get educated in a manner that meets the demands of the test other than meets the need of specific students. Such learning removes the opportunity to be a creative and organic learning experience in the classroom by making learning rigid through standardizing it. This can eliminate the desire for learning in children since it distorts their comprehension. This method also fails to inspire young learners through curiosity and imagination. Failure in the tests alters the school performance which sometimes may force students to drop out of schools. Some vulnerable children relying on lotteries may also lose since there is an over-reliance on tests to determine a qualified candidate. There is also the risk of schools closing as a result of low-performing schools (Popham, 2016).
Effects of Standardized Tests
Standardized tests have several limitations. Firstly, these tests are unable to measure initiative, creativity, imagination, conceptual thinking, curiosity, effort, or ethical reflection. The only aspect they can measure is specific skills, facts, or functions, the least interesting and significant aspects of education. Most students become victims of cognitive decapitation when subjected to standard tests. This takes part in most schools that have had to do away with creative lessons such as geography and arts due to a shortage of funding. The content of the standard test is often trivial and is less used in an academic setting (Huber, 2017).
Given the various advantages of creativity in getting solutions for complex issues both globally and socially, it often feels vital to have students capitalize on creativity in all the educational efforts. Despite this, it is unfortunate that such efforts are often marginalized and overpowered by other demands by the teachers. Assessment may not be a negative force in stimulating creativity but can play a part depending on how it is used to stimulate creativity. The study has shown that certain tests influence motivational belief which may undermine some students when expressing creativity (Alzghoul et al., 2018). Some students are likely to perform higher during the standard tests than during the classroom assessments tests since the educators may have hard grading criteria or the student does not work consistently in class for example does not submit their homework. Relying on such information to judge the student is hence misleading since some may also choose to focus on a standard test. Some students may also be more interested or tend to perform well on multiple-choice items of the standardized tests but not at the variety of constructed responses and performance items the teacher uses making it hard for them to unleash their true potential. We should hence always be cautious of drawing inferences from one kind of assessment and leaving the other when developing creativity for the children (Huber, 2017).
Despite not supporting creativity, standardized testing has been largely been used to wrongly assume that the data it provides resembles the true assessment of a student’s intellectual capability. Some cultural factors and the unfamiliarity with testing methods among other things can result in the dismal performance of the student. It is therefore important that another assessment method is used to determine the student’s ability. A low grade in a paper should not be used to indicate a lack of knowledge about a subject or the problem. For instance, a good writer can struggle to pick the right answers in a multiple-choice grammar test while a good person in multiple-choice can struggle with grammar and punctuation tests (Huber, 2017). It is easy to create an assumption about a student who scores high for being good at processing information and reasoning abstractly but that is not always true.
Possible Solution
Students’ performance tests should not be used to evaluate the educational quality and the effectiveness of teachers. This is because student performance on standard achievement tests is usually heavily influenced by some contributing factors which are linked to the instructional quality, stating that high- or low-test scores are caused by the quality of the directions they get from their instructors. Standardized tests oftentimes point to various forms of performance-based assessments as a preferred alternative. Proficiency-based or competency-based tests require that a student produces their work and demonstrates a high level of thinking and real-world applications. An example is an experiment that illustrates the understanding of scientific concepts, group work that addresses complex issues and requires discussions and presentations, or even an essay that includes analysis of a specific topic (Polleck and Jeffery, 2017).
Enhancing Portfolio-based assessments compared to a standard test is essential since it emphasizes the process of learning over the letter grades and even normative performances. Such portfolios can be made up of physical documents or even digital collections. These tests include written assignments, completed tests, honors and awards. Other tests are the art and craftwork, graphic, lab reports, or even other documents which can demonstrate the progress of a student or their achievement in the long run. Portfolios often provide students with the opportunity to choose the work they wish to reflect on and even present to the class (Huber, 2017). Performance-based assessments are not a practical alternative for the standard tests, rather they offer a very different way to evaluate the knowledge which can provide a more comprehensive view of the student’s achievements. Determining the best systems to evaluate works best in specific circumstances and is an ongoing challenge for education practitioners. Being able to address critical challenges facing educators, challenges such as fair and accurate assessment of academic achievement requires that the practitioners enact policies and show exceptional leadership. Coming up with standards will assist fix this discrepancy by helping education practitioners focus on the students’ needs and help them learn other than becoming distracted with topics to be tested. Educators should often encourage educational materials to move from the vast array of topics in a shallow manner to the few topics in much more depth and understanding.
Conclusion
Taking into account that there's a need to determine successful and effective approaches to gauge scholastic accomplishments, a government sanctioned test is certainly not a reasonable appraisal. This is remained constant despite the fact that The developing worry on government sanctioned tests gives a room that makes an evaluation instrument that will permit people to adequately comprehend the information and abilities that a given understudy has in a specific substance region.
References
Alzghoul, A., Elrehail, H., Emeagwali, O. L., & AlShboul, M. K. (2018). Knowledge management, workplace climate, creativity and performance. Journal of Workplace Learning, 30(8), 592-612. https://doi.org/10.1108/jwl-12-2017-0111
Huber, S. G., & Skedsmo, G. (2017). Standardization and assessment practices. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 29(1), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-017-9257-1
Kellaghan, T., Madaus, G. F., & Airasian, P. W. (1982). The effects of standardized testing: Controversy and research. The Effects of Standardized Testing, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7386-2_1
Nicholds, B. A., & Mo, J. P. (2016). Optimizing performance of manufacturing systems by evaluating performance effectiveness function. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research. https://doi.org/10.18178/ijmerr.5.2.138-143
Polleck, J. N., & Jeffery, J. V. (2017). Common core standards and their impact on standardized test design: A New York case study. The High School Journal, 101(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1353/hsj.2017.0013
Strauss, V. (2021, May 11). The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/05/11/whats-weve-lost-and-what-weve-learned/
