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Standardized Testing in the School System At all levels, from pre-school to four-year colleges and universities, US public education is dominated by a win-lose competitive model, established and supported through standardized testing system. While this model has been relatively successful in educating and training most Americans to function in the type of economic environment that has prevailed since the Second World War, it has almost completely failed to develop a citizenry that can participate fully in the political and social spheres of a capitalist democracy. Therefore, as the US economy evolves into more knowledge-intensive work, requiring more critical thinking and worker autonomy, standardized testing in the educational system can be considered as a great barrier for reaching adequate economic utility nationwide. Moreover, as Deming points out standardized testing along with competitive educational model is destructive to teaching and learning, and antithetical to social justice (Deming, 46 - 48). In the form of passing and failing grades and other invidious comparisons, competition in education is, indeed, a source of motivation to do ones best.
But doing ones best in the typical US public school is operationally defined as achieving high grades, and in the process is manifested as a race to best others for high grades. Not only is this a win-lose game, but it fails to help students distinguish between doing well and besting others. From the critical point of view, victory or winning is operationally and conceptually distinct from learning, and learning how to learn. Citing a vast body of research, Gardner provides an example of outcomes that are typical in the competitive educational setting. Gardner claims that the best students in countrys best schools do not understand very much of the curricular content. Evidence for such allegations is found among physics students at excellent universities - MIT and John Hopkins.
Sample students perform credibly in classroom and especially during end-of-term tests. However, when they were asked to explain relatively simple phenomena, such as forces operating on a tossed coin or pellets trajectory, more than a half of students failed to give appropriate explanations. Moreover, study revealed that sample students gave the same kind of answers as students who had never studied mechanics (Gardner, 120 - 121). Recent work conducted to evaluate the effects of a program for changing undergraduate accounting curricula, reinforces Gardners point. The study tested first-year, sophomore, junior and senior college accounting students on general education outcomes, focusing particularly on their ability to think critically and communicate the concepts and skills they were supposed to have acquired in successive years of college. Controlling for the usual economic and demographic factors, the researchers could find neither statistically nor behaviorally significant differences between first-year students and their more senior undergraduate counterparts in their acquisition and use of these skills.
The results were the same when the testing was extended to sociology undergraduates (Luker, 329 - 31). Taking the SAT, the ACT, or other standardized tests has become almost automatic as a rite of passage for college-bound high school graduates in the USA. Because teachers, parents, students and the public at large believe that they measure an important kernel of native cognitive ability, they powerfully influence instructional, curricular and admission patterns in higher education and professional education, like law and medicine. However, contemporary analysts question standardized tests regarding what exactly the test measure.
For instance, Ets disclaimer says that the test does not measure native ability, intelligence, aptitude, or achievement, but mainly is useful for only one purpose: to predict the Gpa's of first-year college students (Owen and Doerr, 131). Qualifying standardized tests, studies reveal that the simple correlation between SAT scores and first-year college grades is observed only in the range of 0. 35 - 0. 43, thus no more than 19 percent of the variance in first-year college grades accounted for by the SAT. Moreover, even preliminary analysis shows that high school grades are better predictors of first-year college Gpa's. ETS has being denying for a long time that the test notably, which explains that the fact that significant numbers of 200 + point improvements have occurred between sittings if students and their families can afford the fees and believe that coaching works. Finally, the SAT might be useful in the context of contradictions between grades and SAT scores, but even there it is not particularly valuable because not many fall into that category (Owen and Doerr, 198).
Most importantly, the scores are highly correlated with socioeconomic class, measured by income and job status, race, ethnicity and gender. From the view of multivariate analysis, considering SAT scores attribution to class, gender and race, the predictive power of the SAT is reduced to zero. From the critical point of view, the SAT and other standardized tests do not predict academic aptitude but merely measure class, race and gender. Modifying the SAT requirement, an accountability movement has flooded public schools around the country with new standardized tests that are barriers to advancement, admission, and even graduation. For instance, in Texas all students at and above the 3 rd grade, and continuing through the end of the sophomore year in college, are now tested on their mastery of certain subject matter. Interestingly, these are tests that the ETS declined to construct or administer.
In spite of the rewards of a lengthy and lucrative state government contract, they declined the job of designing or validating an instrument that could be subject to some of the same flaws as the SAT and therefore to the possible litigation. However, despite the well-documented shortcomings of standardized tests, in many states, like TAAS in Texas, they shape curricula, teaching methods, student progress, graduation, entry into a university and progress at the university beyond a students sophomore year. Contemporary analysts cannot objectively evaluate and validate the ability of the TAAS to measure skills and concepts useful to students. However, there is a fact that tests like the TAAS are competitive within and across schools, and are used to measure school quality. Low-performing schools, as measured by the test, can be punished in various ways. Standardized tests are used to allocate special rewards to high-performing teachers and administrators, to promote students from one grade to the next, and prevent promotion in cases of failure.
Moreover, scores from tests of this type are usually highly correlated with socioeconomic class and race, and thus have the potential to be highly discriminatory. In most forms standardized tests should be abandoned. Their effect is ultimately discriminatory. The exception should be their use in remediation and improvement because their misuse does not lie, as Gould suggests, with testing itself (Gould, 155).
Because they are reliable and valid for the diagnostic purposes they were intended, certain tests are useful in assessing, for example, own learning-disabled child. In the American world of work, ordinate-subordinate relationships are still overwhelmingly the norm, with information and instructions flowing from top to bottom rather than the reverse. Given that there is relatively little room for personal autonomy, much less creative and independent thought, it is not surprising that tests have done a relatively good job of preparing many US children for successful participation in the economic life of the middle class. However, because it does not emphasize critical thinking, standardized testing system in education does not provide the skills needed for most Americans to function effectively in the civic and political life of a democratic society. Moreover, if the US workplace changes in ways that many industrial relations experts believe that it must during the next 20 to 30 years, standardized tests may also lose its effectiveness as a mechanism for effective workplace socialization. There is a growing consensus that the education needed for economic success in a knowledge-based economy demands different skills than those typically acquired under the standardized test system.
The number of firms that have been forced to develop extensive in-house training programs for new and incumbent employees is evidence that the contemporary model is not providing workers with the skills and attitudes toward education that their companies require. From the practical point of view, classroom organization can take one of three forms, namely students can work against each other, students can work in isolation, or students can cooperate with each other (Kohn Ch. 10). Shifting to cooperative learning system is considered to be an adequate substitution for failing standardized testing system. It involves mutual editing, helping, sharing, and supporting. Moreover, it stresses and teaches a win-win game, that of positive interdependence. Cooperatively interdependent classrooms build social skills and community bonds, surroundings in which disagreement can occur without rancor and conflict can occur without destructive competition.
It is an environment that emphasizes what students can do together. Bibliography Deming, W. E. (1993), The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Engineering Study, Cambridge, MA Gardner, H. (1999), The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY Luker, W. A. (1994), UNT accounting change program evaluation: empirical examination of baseline competencies, Accounting Education for the 21 st Century: The Global Challenges, The American Accounting Association, New York, NY. Owen, D. and Doerr, M. (1999), None of the Above: The Truth behind the SATs, Rowman & Littlefield, New York, NY Gould, S. (1981), The Mismeasure of Man, WX Norton, New York, NY Kohn, A. (1992), No Contest: The Case Against Competition, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA
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Research essay sample on Standardized Testing In The School System
