Throughout history many institutions have attempted to perfect tests, programs and activities that accurately capture a quantifiable value to represent the intelligence and learning capabilities of a student. From Intelligence Quotient tests in the 1900s, to the Common Core tests being used in schools today, the impact of testing on the culture of today's classrooms has been enormous. That said, the American education system needs standardized testing. That's not exactly what you're used to hearing from many current and pre-service teachers. In the past couple of years the popular opinion has been in opposition of testing. While these tests do bring exhaustion, disruption and anxiety to our classrooms, they undoubtedly offer national entities an efficient overview of the state of the education system. Rather than calling for a complete removal of the tests from our schools, perhaps what is needed to create a healthy environment for students is a reduction in the number of tests.
In order to understand why and how excessive standardized testing is harmful to the schooling of a child, a working definition of what standardized testing is, and entails must be established. A standardized test could be defined as any written, oral or audio examination administered to students on a national, state or local level with the intention of measuring a student’s knowledge, understanding or academic aptitude regarding concepts, lessons or themes either discussed in classroom lectures, or inferred from questions posed on the exam. What can be defined as detrimental or harmful to a student, or classroom environment in the context of academics is any activity, lecture, exam or other academic endeavor that creates excessive fatigue, requires an excessive time frame in which to be accomplished, or impedes or infringes upon an educator’s ability to instruct students in such a way that presents material for the purpose of learning.
In a recent study conducted by an online educational journal called The Island Packet, it was found that the average student will take upwards up 60 standardized tests upon the completion of high school. Standardized tests such as the CAT’s, the ACT’s, the SAT’s, the AP’s, the IB’s, the AIR’s, the MAP’s, the HSAP’s and the PLAN’s work in unison to create only a fraction of the monstrous testing cloud that educational and governmental institutions use to assess the cognitive abilities, and college readiness of students. It would stand to reason that these tests meet all of the criteria of a standardized test. The frequency, time commitment and demanding nature of the content of each of these examinations would indicate that they are, when used in excess, a detriment to students and a healthy classroom environment. Additionally, when such a large number of tests are used to measure the intelligence of a student population, the focus of the curriculum tends to err more on the side of test prep rather than the understanding and literacy of concepts.
Thankfully, there is a solution and plan to reduce the number of standardized tests used in schools. On December 10, 2015 President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This bipartisan bill replaced the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind act, which was responsible for creating many of the national benchmarks that prompted the increase in testing. The ESSA act returns the responsibility of setting student performance targets back to the states, and allows these targets to be based on multiple measures instead of tests alone. Furthermore, the new bill allows for states to intervene to aid struggling schools, as opposed to adhering to NCLB's one-size-fits-all federal standards. The bill is set to go into effect beginning this coming school year as the appropriate changes will be made. This new era in education will hopefully do away with the anxiety ridden tests of the past, and allow for students' abilities to be assessed with low stakes, and low frequency.
