Many arguments can and have been made in favor of and against proficiency, or standardized tests. While to a certain, albeit small degree, I can understand how standardized testing can be beneficial to assess students and teachers, and potentially halt social promotion, the practice of allowing students to advance from grade to grade whether or not they have met the academic standards of their grade level. I do not agree that proficiency tests are the answer for our children’s education. Proficiency tests are rarely standard state to state, cause undue stress to young children, take away from meaningful education, and often times teachers look for ways to game or cheat the system in order to receive better scores or more government funding.
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If standardized tests were unreliable, their use would not be so widespread. Also, proficiency tests can be inclusive and non-discriminatory because they ensure content is equivalent for all students. This allows for an even playing field for all students to be graded on. What’s more, proficiency tests may help prevent social promotion, A Dec. 2004 paper by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research found Florida's 2002 initiative to end social promotion, holding back students who failed year-end standardized tests, improved those students' scores by 9% in math and 4% in reading after one year (Greene and Winters 2004).
While there may be some pros to standardized testing, in my opinion the cons carry a more significant weight. Every state develops its own standards for their respective proficiency tests, these varying standards provide no base line for test comparison state to state. A student taking a standardized test in Connecticut takes a completely different test than a student in Florida who takes a different test than a student in Wyoming. For tests to be standard, they all need to be the
If standardized tests were unreliable, their use would not be so widespread. Also, proficiency tests can be inclusive and non-discriminatory because they ensure content is equivalent for all students. This allows for an even playing field for all students to be graded on. What’s more, proficiency tests may help prevent social promotion, A Dec. 2004 paper by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research found Florida's 2002 initiative to end social promotion, holding back students who failed year-end standardized tests, improved those students' scores by 9% in math and 4% in reading after one year (Greene and Winters 2004).
While there may be some pros to standardized testing, in my opinion the cons carry a more significant weight. Every state develops its own standards for their respective proficiency tests, these varying standards provide no base line for test comparison state to state. A student taking a standardized test in Connecticut takes a completely different test than a student in Florida who takes a different test than a student in Wyoming. For tests to be standard, they all need to be the