What do you think about standardized testing?

[puddintain]

I was wondering what everyone's opinion was on these? In Louisiana, we have to take the LEAP test to pass from 8th grade to highschool. It doesn't matter what your final grades are, if you fail the Math and or English, you fail for the year or have to go to summer school. I missed my math by 5 stupid points and now i have to take a month of summer school, on Monday and Wednesday Math is not my strong point, but I did pass the class with a final grade of a C and a B for the final six weeks. Anyway are your thoughts on standardized tests?

[Spaniard]

I think they are really narrow minded and not really a true judge of intelligence. There are many extremely bright people who just do not take tests well. I think they can be a useful tool for schools in structuring their education programs but to make it the determining factor of major consequences was never something I agreed with.

[abuja]

Hey, puddintain, you are going to be a freshman in high school, too? Personally, I hate standardized testing, mostly because I'm bad at taking tests and I just can't get into the mind of the test-maker when it comes to reading comp.

[tonkatoyman]

Standardized testing is like trying to put everyone in the same neat little box. Some just won't fit. I remember the good old days when highly qualified teachers made the decision because they knew you and what you were capable of. Sorry kids this is it unless someone comes along and changes it.

[kc261]

I believe standardized tests are extremely useful in many ways. They can help to identify students, teachers, or schools that are doing poorly, or doing exceptionally well. They are about the only tool available to be able to compare schools, and even that is pretty lame because for the most part, tests are standardized at the state level, so comparing schools in 2 different states is close to impossible.

They also are testing something entirely different than the grades that you get, which are usually based on homework and chapter tests. The standardized tests are meant to test whether or not you retained the knowledge, which is something quite different than whether or not you can pass a test on Friday that covers the material you worked on that week. Of course, since probably all schools do lots of review just before the standardized tests, it really doesn't test that anyway, which is kind of stupid.

Since the "no child left behind" law, and to at least some extent before that, they have become the only thing that matters, which is wrong. There should be ways that exceptions can be made when warranted. But if there were ways to make those exceptions, I would agree with the idea of standardized testing and requiring that people pass the tests to move on. Certain things about standardized tests and how they are used may be stupid, but so is having kids graduate from high school who cannot do basic reading or math.

[Ben Biscy]

standardized tests are extremely important, and generally extremely easy to score high marks on. someone who "does not test well" has a problem, somewhere, some way, some how.

i do feel that standardized tests should be higher in standards, making the subjects work harder to pass the test. there are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too many stupid and/or ignorant people in the world today, which is 90% of the reason we as a race (humans) are stagnating.

[blackcrystal22]

standardized tests are extremely important, and generally extremely easy to score high marks on. someone who "does not test well" has a problem, somewhere, some way, some how.

i do feel that standardized tests should be higher in standards, making the subjects work harder to pass the test. there are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too many stupid and/or ignorant people in the world today, which is 90% of the reason we as a race (humans) are stagnating.

Hmm.. Ignorance.
My boyfriend received a 35 out of 36 on the ACT, putting him at the highest standards. I received a 24, and many of our friends received between a 22-30. Heres the thing, many of my friends took pre-ACT study classes to get a better score. Me and my boyfriend did not. He didn't want to, and I could not afford to.

I do relatively good in school. Averaging mostly A's and B's in normal classes with a few scattered Cs. He gets straight A's in all of his honors classes and AP classes.
The thing that severely bothers me is that he will never study for a test. Not once. He doesn't even study for finals and he gets A's every time. I study for weeks before a final and usually barely come out with C's.
Want to know why? I am a bad test-taker, because of the way I use my brain. There is not something wrong with me, I just retain information with pictures and he retains with words. I can not memorize sentences or dates or numbers like he can, but at the same time, he struggles with Art, Creativity, and doing Projects, which I generally excel at.

Some people have different way's of retaining information. Sadly, most schools only use words and numbers to teach which makes me struggle quite a bit. I don't think they will have anything to do with your life in the long-run but they will slow things down for you now. Don't think college just bases their acceptance on tests. One of the seniors who went to my school and got a 36 with a high GPA was declined from MIT and Cal Tech, there reasoning was they wanted someone more creative and open-minded. Go figures.

Edit: I don't know if you noticed, but that also means that your calling me stupid, the OP stupid, and anyone else on this forum who doesn't test well stupid. How nice of you.

[wolfy-hound]

He didn't call you stupid. You put a few different things together to make it that way. People who preform badly on tests DO have something "wrong", in that they don't process the information the same way. A test is basically a structured set of questions about information you are now supposed to know. If you learn how to properly set up your ball python, you should easily be able to answer basic questions about how warm it should be, how big the enclosure should be, how often should it eat... Just because someone writes the questions down and you have to answer them in writing doesn't mean you now don't understand how to care for the snake. I myself am lousy at remembering dates and numbers, but I managed to graduate with a AB average(before 10th grade it was a A average).

Testing for school standards HAS become lax, due to the whole idea that the class has to preform at the level of the lowest student. We have more and more classes graduating without being able to do basic math and reading. The standards are lower because more children were failing. So instead of teaching the kids more/better/differently, they lowered the standards.

IF you did away with standardized testing, then any school could "graduate" studants at any level of knowledge they wanted. They could give A's to everyone, regardless of their actual learning of basic math, reading and writing. The standardized tests are designed to make certain that the studants ACTUALLY are learning the materials.

Now the protecals and the rules and the timing and fuss they make are somewhat ridiculous. Colleges need to go by something to make sure new students will be able to preform in the classes they are signing up for. If there were no standard test, then you could sign up students for classes, only to discover they have no basic understanding to build on. The entire idea of "graduating" school would be worthless. Schools that wanted more funding would just assign higher grades, to make themselves look accomplished.

All in all, I think they are a fine idea. They are not the end-all of creation, nor the only way to decide on college entrance, or a person's level of "smart". There's plenty of really intelligent people out there that can't even read. But are they educated? No. They are smart, useful, a boon to society maybe.. but not educated.

[wilomn]

You know what I really like about standardized testing? And I know this from not only first hand experience but actually talking to several teachers.

What I really like about standardized testing is that in order to do well on the tests normal schooling is put on hold. Yup. I think it's pretty neat that in order to do well on a test that has pretty much nothing to do with how well you can actually do in a given subject but really zeroes in on how well you test, regular subjects like math and reading and that really bothersome one called history are skipped over.

You see, if the children learn what they should but do not test as well as standards dictate the school loses money. Fundage is decreased.

Can't have that. Better to turn out students who couldn't tell you who Lincoln was, don't know the difference between a mammal and a bird, couldn't tell you in a million years how much 20% of 100 was and had a vocabulary of about 180 words.

Yup, stupid but paid for is the way.

Standardized testing is wonderful.

[RebelYell83]

i can see the college acceptance test,to be partially used along with your admittence application to judge that,but then i dont see the need for all of the other ones,i will be blatantly honest here,my spelling sucks,my gramma sucks,i aced with a 4.0 high school english every year,i blasted my 8th grade sat's so well when i signed up for highschool they wanted to put me in honors until they seen my grades,my issue,i couldnt sit in one class for 2 hours a day,and the only reason i busted my hump in 9th grade at first was to play football,but due to 2 coaches bickering over if i should play freshmen or varsity,they told me i was academically not elidgable due to my 8th grade gpa,which in florida,does not matter for first semester sports as a freshman,was just an excuse to not have the coaches bicker,i ended up dropping out,i couldnt do 2 hours per class,i couldnt sit still and focus on reading a book,but in classes we did hands on stuff i did great,and every test i did great,because i listened,and i participated in class room discussions,and that was enough to do paper one of class or homework,but still pull low c's and high d's in class,going by just my testing,i should be a Rhodes Scholar,,,just saying,,2 sides to the argument