Standardized tests don’t provide any feedback on how to perform better.  The results aren’t even given back to the teachers and students until months later, and there are no instructions provided  by test companies on how to improve these test scores.

If you have the money, you can even get special tutors that will help you do well on a test.  If you don’t have the money, and your school is in a low socio-economic area that gets less funding than rich suburban schools, then you’re not getting the same preparation for the test as those at the higher socio-economic levels do.

Standardized tests occur in an artificial learning environment:  they’re timed, you can’t talk to a fellow student, you can’t ask questions, you can’t use references or learning devices, you can’t get up and move around.  How often does the real world look like this?  Prisons come to mind.  And yet, even the most hard-headed conservative will say that education must prepare students for “the real world.” Clearly standardized testing doesn’t do this

Standardized tests exist for administrative, political, and financial purposes, not for educational ones.  Test companies make billions.  Politicians get elected by promising better test results.  Administrators get funding and avoid harsh penalties by boosting test scores.  Everyone benefits except the children.  For them, standardized testing is worthless and worse.

If a school's standardized test scores are low, they see the school's staff as ineffective.

The most common examples are the SAT-I and the ACT both of which attempt to forecast how well high school students will perform in college.

A standardized test is any examination that's administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner. There are two major kinds of standardized tests: aptitude tests and achievement tests.

Using test scores to reward and punish teachers and schools encourages them to cheat the system for their own gain

Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance.

The potential impact of educational tests rose dramatically when, in 2002, President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act. This important federal law makes students' test performances the chief determiner in how schools (and teachers) are to be evaluated.

Educational tests allow teachers to make inferences about a student's unseen skills or knowledge, but these inferences may or may not be valid. The skills and knowledge children possess can't be seen. When Sally correctly spells all 25 words on her teacher's spelling test, the teacher infers that Sally is a good speller. Similarly, when Jane misspells more than half of the test's 25 words, the teacher infers that Jane's spelling skills are weak and need to be improved. If, on the basis of a student's test performance, an accurate inference is made about the student's unseen abilities, measurement experts call this a valid inference. But people, not tests, make these inferences. And people have been known to make mistakes.

Because educational tests (both teacher-made classroom tests and commercially developed standardized tests) vary in their quality, it should not be assumed that every educational test is a good one.

There are many people who simply do not perform well on tests. Many of these students are smart and understand the content, but it doesn’t show on the test. Many students also develop test anxiety which hinders performance. Finally, there are so many external factors that play into test performance. If a student has an argument with their parents the morning of the test, chances are their focus isn’t going to be where it should be

Standardized testing causes many teachers to only “teach to the tests”. This practice canhinder a student’s overall learning potential. With the stakes getting higher and higher for teachers, this practice will only continue to increase. The sad reality is that it fosters an atmosphere that is boring and lacks creativeness. Teachers have suchpressure to get their students ready for these exams that they neglect to teach students skills that go beyond the tests

Standardized tests can place a huge amount of stress on students and teachers alike.This can lead to negative health consequences as well as feelings of negativity directed at school and learning in general

A major effort is underway to cut back on standardized testing because many, including President Obama and Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, argue that too many tests detract from student learning in the classroom.

A typical student takes 112 mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarten classes and 12th grade, a new Council of the Great City Schools study found. By contrast, most countries that outperform the United States on international exams test students three times during their school careers.

In 40 percent of districts surveyed, test results aren’t available until the following school year, making them useless for teachers who want to use results to help guide their work in the classroom, Casserly said.

. A standardized test is a type of examination that is administered and scored in the same way in every school and classroom throughtout the U.S. in an attempt to provide an objective measurement of student learning. This type of testing has become very prevalent in modern education.

You have probably already had many experiences with standardized testing, either by taking or protoring them. A standardized test is a type of examination that is administered and scored in the same way in every school and classroom throughtout the U.S. in an attempt to provide an objective measurement of student learning. This type of testing has become very prevalent in modern education. This lesson will detail some of the pros and cons of standardized testing that you will encounter throughout your teaching career. The PositivesImagine that you are teaching a lesson and want to know how effective your teaching is. The most natural way to measure this would be to administer a test to gauge student learning. If your students perform well, you know you are teaching effectively. If they perform poorly, you might need to re-evaluate some of your methods. This is helpful information for any teacher, as you might expect. This evaluation need is met by standarized testing. Standardized testing is the perfect tool for objectively measuring student achievement. Because the tests are always the same, administered the same way and scored the same way, they are almost perfectly objective. One positive aspect of standardized tests is that they are great tools for objectively measuring student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Because they are great at measuring teacher effectiveness, standardized tests are also effective in holding teachers and schools accountable for student achievement. They can be and are used to make sure teachers are aware of what their students need to know and are helping them achieve success. Test scores are public record and therefore help schools remain accountable for student achievement and success. Standardized tests are so named because, no matter which school or classroom you are in, the testing process is identical. This presents another positive aspect of standardized testing: the ability to compare student achievement between schools and across city, county, and state lines. Using standardized tests, you can see how a student in Philadelphia is performing compared to a student in Los Angeles. This ability to compare student achievement can help ensure that students all across the country are achieving at the highest level. In doing so, we are able to help the entire country improve in education, helping us prepare our students to live and succeed in a global community. The Negatives'Yes!', you may be thinking, 'standardized tests are the best!' While it is true that these tests can be very useful for several different reasons, they are not without their drawbacks. Such tests have come under heavy criticism for several reasons that you should be aware of while preparing your students to take them. The first of these major downsides is that standardized testing often leads to a decrease in classroom time dedicated to teaching and learning more traditional subjects. Teachers often need to spend significant amounts of time preparing students to take the tests so that they can do well, leaving less time to teach subjects that tests do not evaluate, such as social studies. This has resulted in the common phrase of 'teaching to the test', meaning teachers are almost exclusively focused on helping students get good standardized test

You have probably already had many experiences with standardized testing, either by taking or protoring them. A standardized test is a type of examination that is administered and scored in the same way in every school and classroom throughtout the U.S. in an attempt to provide an objective measurement of student learning. This type of testing has become very prevalent in modern education.

Hallatt, Alex. “Arctic Circle.” Comic strip. King Features Syndicate, Inc. 1 Sept. 2008. Web. 12 July 2009.

Loder, Natasha, Elizabeth Finkel, Craig Meisner, and Pamela Ronald. “The Problem of What to Eat.” Conservation Magazine. The Society for Conservation Biology, July-Sept. 2008. Web. 16 Dec. 2009.