Standardized testing -- something everyone has experienced but probably not put much thought into. We grow up taking tests that we're taught to believe are an indicator of our intelligence -- an indicator of how successful we will be and how we compare to our peers. Truly, I had never put thought into them. I always took them as something that had to be done. Growing up and going through school, I never tested well. After many years of studying to the point of exhaustion, I deemed myself to just be bad at school. I would spend the same time learning and studying the same materials as my peers, only to do significantly worse on the tests, so I gave up.
When I came to college, I made the decision to major in education. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a teacher. I remember being little and setting up a classroom in my room, "reading" stories to my pretend students before I even knew how to read. Coming to college to learn about the profession I felt was my life's calling thrilled me to no end and gave me a newfound passion for school and for learning. While my education through college has been excellent and taught me many exciting strategies and innovative approaches to teaching, it has also brought to my attention how much standardized testing has gotten in the way of what it truly means to be an educator as well as a student. As a future teacher, here are a few reasons why I am against standardized testing in schools:
It takes the art out of teaching.
One of the things that scares me the most about being a teacher is not successfully teaching my students what's on the test so they can pass. Out of all the things in the world that I could be concerned about when it comes to my future students, this is my main worry. Why has this become such a main priority, you ask. It's because a teacher's success is no longer determined by how much a student learns, how well they accommodate their lessons to meet the needs of their kids, or on what level their students grasp the information. The success of a teacher has now become almost fully based off of how well their students do on these tests. While I do understand the overall idea for putting these standard tests into place, it has turned teaching from an art that requires creative, talented, and passionate people to a structured practice that makes passionate future educators such as myself lose hope in the system because where the focus should be on the students and their learning, it is now instead on heavily weighted tests.
There should be nothing standard about learning.
The idea behind statewide or nationwide testing is basically that every child is learning the same things at the same time so that everyone is on the same page and not falling behind. It sounds like a good plan overall, but the problem with making the same learning plan for all students is that it implies that all children are the same and learn the same. If you take one individual classroom and look at the students, you'll find many different personalities with many different learning styles, all coming from many different backgrounds. Teaching to that alone in a way that covers every student's needs is difficult enough; add to that the need to cover a certain amount of material in a certain amount of time, and it's impossible to ensure every child understands the material you've taught before you're already having to move on to stay on track. Standardized testing implies standardized learning -- and there should be absolutely nothing "standard" about the way someone learns or the speed in which they learn it.
It kills innovation.
One of the most exciting facets about teaching is the fact that I can make children excited about learning. In my position, I have the ability to change the way a student feels about school. There are so many cool and innovative ways to teach subjects and topics that allow opportunity to be creative and engage students in the learning process, but the ability to do this significantly decreases as more and more focus gets put on testing. Some of the best memories I have from school are when my teachers took a break from the regular lesson to expand on an idea in a creative or innovative way, or even when they went completely off topic to teach us about something cool that didn't necessarily fit into the lesson but was interesting and intriguing to us as students. As more emphasis has been put on passing benchmark tests for subjects such as reading and math, less time is available to go off the structured path to do innovative things that make students excited about learning.
It prepares students to be good test takers.
As a future teacher, there are many things I hope for my students. I hope that they will be passionate, I hope they will be avid learners and deep thinkers, I hope they will learn to question things and not just accept what is told to them, and, most of all, I hope they will grow to be amazing individuals. As their future teacher, I can only hope that I will play a small part in guiding them to become these things. All of the traits mentioned above contribute to students not only becoming a successful student, but they prepare them to be successful members of society. The problem with putting so much emphasis on testing is that it teaches the students that what is important is their ability to be good test takers. Yes, getting an A on a test is something to be proud of, but your ability to get an A does not determine what kind of individual you are, how smart you are, or how successful you will be. Being an A student is temporary, but being able to think about and understand the material on a deep level is a skill that will benefit you for a lifetime.
"A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning." -- Brad Henry
