Educators
Educators and educative administrators play a big role in how students are measured for achievement. Typically, educative administrators make the final call as to whether or not certain standardized tests will be administered in the regions they look over. Many educators, usually higher up in administration, advocate for standardized testing. This is due to many reasons, the primary one being that standardized testing provides quick, objective measures of student comprehension in their eyes. For many educators, testing provides a good reason for increased funding to their schools, provided their students score well. For example, in James Aycock's article, Aycock expresses that standardized testing is objective and therefore provides a good basis for comparison of students across regions. Aycock also states that because standardized testing has been utilized for so long in our education system, that we need not change such a long-lasting system. Others believe that standardized testing is the only way that student comprehension can be evaluated. Patrick J. Wolf J , professor of Education reform and Endowed Chair in school choice at the University of Arkansas, shows that tests should be more regularly implemented to ensure students are being accurately evaluated in his article. He argues that without testing, there is little or no way to observe if students are gaining crucial concepts. Many educators also promote "teaching to the test" because they argue that if the correct material is being tested, then teaching to the test is teaching the necessary material, and thus students are learning what they need to know. This is the argument of Gail Gross, family and child development expert, author, and lecturer, in her article.
Parents
The somewhat hidden victims of standardized testing are the parents of the students who take these assessments. Not only do parents go through similar stress to students of worrying about their children achieving satisfactory or high scores, they also have the added stress of seeing their children go through the frustrated process that is standardized testing. Parents are also affected by their children ability to take standardized tests as they seem to be a measure of comprehension of material. This is often the reason why they are against standardized testing. In Lelac Almagor's article a mother is shown to be visibly upset with her daughter's test scores as she was under the impression her daughter would score highly on the test because she was a good student in school. She appears confused and stressed about how she was misinformed about her daughter's level of comprehension. This parent of a low-income background reflects many parents of the same environment. Because funding often is determined by standardized testing, and many low-income students do poorly on tests, low-income schools do not receive as much funding as do wealthier schools. This results in a test inequity that many parents, such as the one in Almagor's article, find infuriating because their children are essentially denied opportunity for the gaining the best education possible. Meredith Broussard,a professor at Temple University and also a parent of a child taking many standardized tests, sympathizes with all parents in this situation. In her article, she discusses her own attempts at cheating or gaming the standardized testing system in order to ensure her son's high score and good performance on the test.
|
Students
On the other side of the test is a student who is often struggling and under intense pressure from the test. Because the world of testing is taken over by adults like teachers, parents, and administrators, students' opinions are often overlooked. However, students have been speaking up about they way their material comprehension is measured on tests. For obvious reasons, most students advocate for the ban of standardized tests. Testing is grueling, tiring, and stressful. Many students have expressed frustration at the current standardized testing system with legitimate reason as to why testing does not accurately asses their retention of material. Nationally acclaimed educator and historian Nicholas Ferroni outlines why (most of) his students disagree with the idea of standardized testing in this article. One student, a 10th grader named Brandon, says what is on many critics mind "I think standardized tests are a waste of time and money. Life is more open-ended, not multiple choice." Max An, a sophomore at the University of Maryland studying neurobiology and physiology, agrees in his article. In it he discusses the major problems of standardized testing, mainly that testing is leading to an increase of black-and-white thinking, of thought processes that strive to find that an answer is either wrong or right. These thoughts are perpetuated by the multiple choice system employed by most, if not all, standardized tests. He also expresses his concern that because of standardized testing and teaching to the test, material covered in schools will be limited to material on the tests. This material rarely covers subjects such as the arts. Because the arts are important in child development, especially for the development of creative skill which is highly necessary in real life, the shift in focus away from art due to the increase in testing could be extremely detrimental to our education system.