High Performing Essay

Standardized testing is being used around the US in schools. The Common Core
State Testing, TerraNova, Star Tests, and the SAT and ACT. These play a big role in US
education, the results let the teachers know what needs to be worked on in the
classroom, and what students need what help. The ACT and SAT are taken by high
school students looking to go to college, and the test results help with admission by
telling what students are academically ready for their school. Without these tests
teachers would not know what the students actually need, and colleges would have to
go by GPA which would make the admission process much more hard. Standardized
testing is a good thing to have in the US.
Standardized testing is a good and the best way to see how your students are
apprehending what they are being taught, and also to see how well your teachers are
teaching. Also, standardized tests are scored the same for every kid, which results in no
bias. In the article Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America?
on http://standardizedtests.procon.org/, which is an orginization that reseraches and
studies the debates of the worlds and gives pros and cons, says, Standardized tests are
reliable and objective measures of student achievement. Without them, policy makers
would have to rely on tests scored by individual schools and teachers who have a vested
interest in producing favorable results. Multiple-choice tests, in particular, are graded by
machine and therefore are not subject to human subjectivity or bias. Having students
taking standardized tests guarantees no bias, and very much more score accuracy than
just the tests that are done in the classroom.
Students knowing what they need to study and need to work on can be very
helpful with their learning. In the article The Pros of Standardized Testing written by
Colette Kemmerling, who is an art teacher in Philadelphia, even though she is not a
professional on standardized testing, she is a teacher and has an inside look on what
really happens ,and she says, The testing and its feedback send clearer signals to
students about what they need to study. Knowing that they have mastered something,
but have not mastered another thing lets them set their priorities on what they need to
work on the most. Without standardized testing teachers have no way of knowing what
needs to be taught the most, and what their students truly know.
Critics against standardized testing say that the test scores do not help the
teachers. In the article Whats Wrong With Standardized Tests? which is written by a
website that is The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, says, The tests do not
help a teacher understand what to do next in working with a student because they do not
indicate how the student learns or thinks. Some of that may be true, but the test
results show what the student has learned, and what the student needs to learn. It is the
teachers job to actually interact with their students and learn how they think and learn.

The US is already using standardized testing, and we need to keep using it. Yes, there
are some things that could be better about it, but we cant just totally drop it, or else we
wouldnt know what we needed to teach are students. Without standardized testing
teachers wouldnt know what to teach on, students wouldnt know what they were
excelling in and what they needed to be working, and parents wouldnt know how their
kids education was going. (599 words)
Medium Performing Essay
I am against standardized testing because it is not accurate at all. Students test
non stop for 3 days straight, they get barely any rest from their testing; its just test after
test after test. A student's brain just starts to deplete more and more after each day.
A writer from fairtest, a writer against standardized testing, says that the
questions most people get right or wrong are removed because they dont help with
ranking. They also say for example, because of a measurement error, two people with
much different scores on an exam could get close to the same score on a retest, or vice
versa. I think that this is very true and the standardized tests dont really tell the teachers
and administrators anything about how much we know or anything like that.
If someone were to tell me that standardized testing is good because we need
some sort of data to look at so that they could plan for what they need to teach and the
standards they need to meet. I would tell them that they could look at how a student is
scoring on class assignments, tests, assessments, etc. I do think that they need
someone telling them what they need to teach, but I think that the government could still
tell them what they need to teach and just look at how the child is doing in school.
Instead of putting inaccurate tests on their back.
Lelac Almagor who teaches at a high performing charter school in Washington,
D.C. says that the only reason schools are still for standardized testing is because it
gives them guidelines to teach during the school year otherwise they wouldnt have any
guidance on what the students need to learn and things like that. However, people might
say that standardized testing is also good for ranking, letting students know how they are
doing, government funding, etc. What I say to that, is that all of those thing can be done
by using the classic gradebook and regular assessments in class.
I am against standardized testing because it is not accurate at all. Students test
non stop for 3 days straight, they get barely any rest from their testing; its just test after
test after test. A student's brain just starts to deplete more and more after each day. In
this essay I talk about ranking, government funding, and many other issues with
standardized testing. Please follow my lead in getting rid of standurdized testing for a
better future, and better generations to come. (425 words)
Low Performing Essay
[This student has an IEP for language usage.]
Standardized Tests

I believe that standardized tests should not be required in classes at Monett High
School because the test scores are unreliable, that teacher do not find the testing
helpful, and the belief that test scores predict future performance is incorrect.
Standardized testing scores can be unreliable and have measurement error.
According the article, Whats Wrong with Standardized Tests, This means an
individual's score may vary significantly from day to day due to test conditions or
the test takers mental or emotional state. What this say is if you are happy and
up to test taking than you would do better than if you were sad and not wanting to
do the test. Also, some people have trouble taking a test because they are
stressed about taking the test.
Teachers sometimes do not find standardized testing helpful in planning lessons.
According to the article by Lelac Almagor, a high school teacher, The problem is
that measuring how well a younger student reads is close to impossible, at least
through any standardized approach. This is because if the teacher want to know
what your class has been learning they could go one on one and ask kid read so
of the book then ask what the story was about.
Some people think that test scores can predict future performance. In the Article
The pros of standardized testing ,SAT and ACT have been shown to be effective
in predicting a student's future performance in higher education. This is not true
because one test score the school should look at GPA, extracurricular activities,
recommendations, essay, etc.
What this is saying it that standardized text are not reliable to school and usually
do not help to teacher plan lessons and can not predict future performance of
Students. (290 words)