Standardized testing has not improved student achievement. After No Child Left Behind (NCLB) passed in 2002, the US slipped from 18th in the world in math on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to 31st place in 2009, with a similar drop in science and no change in reading. [95] [145] [144] A May 26, 2011, National Research Council report found no evidence test-based incentive programs are working: "Despite using them for several decades, policymakers and educators do not yet know how to use test-based incentives to consistently generate positive effects on achievement and to improve education." [154]

Finally, modern society requires certain traits from individuals that standardized testing cannot measure. To be successful in a global economy, students need to come out of school having learned creative problem solving, innovation, and collaboration with others. Standardized testing measures none of this. The time students should be spending practicing these skills is instead spent learning how to take the test.

Additionally, in many cases standardized testing puts an incredible amount of stress on both teachers and students. Teachers are often judged professionally by their students' scores on standardized tests. This means that their jobs are sometimes on the line when it comes to standardized testing.

This stress often leads to teachers placing emphasis the importance of high scores within the classroom, transferring the stress to the students. Imagine being told that your entire professional future hinges on your students' performances on one test. Now imagine that you happen to be a student who generally doesn't perform very well on tests, even though you know you are learning well and succeeding in other areas. Either case is an unfortunate side effect of standardized tests.

Standardized tests don't always measure student learning as intended. Not every student learns or demonstrates academic achievement in the same way, so it is impossible to have a test that will accurately reflect every student's effort and knowledge. This fact makes standardized test scores a flawed metric in many instances.

1. Standardized testing makes various teachers to “teach to the tests” only. Such practice hinders the overall learning potential of the student.

It generally affects the way teachers teach the students. It typically affects the value of learning in the classroom.

4. It makes great stress on both the students and the educators. The best teachers are quitting their profession daily due to the stress of preparing their students to work on standardized testing.

. Standardized tests can evaluate the student’s individual performance than his overall growth throughout the year. Many argue that the student and teacher performance must get evaluated on growth throughout the year than a single test performance alone.

Common Core Standards will be a tremendously difficult adjustment for students and teachers initially. Make no mistake that this will be a difficult transition. It is not the way many teachers are used to teaching and not the way that many students are used to learning. There will not be instant results, but instead will be a slow process.

The Common Core Standards will likely cause many outstanding teachers and administrators to pursue other career options. Many veteran teachers will retire rather than adjust the way they teach. The stress of getting their students to perform will likely cause more teacher and administrator burnout.

Standardized testing can be wrongfully used as fuel for those with political agendas. This is a sad reality far too often across all levels of the political realm. Education is a hot political topic and rightfully so, but the center of this debate is often standardized test scores. The truth is that standardized test scores are often looked at as the end all for student and school success and it shouldn’t be that way. Many would argue that those politicians who try and use standardized test scores as a means to further political agenda are ignorant in their knowledge of what education and learning is truly about.

Standardized testing can create a lot of stress on both educators and students. Excellent teachers quit the profession everyday because of how much stress is on them to prepare students to perform on standardized tests. Students especially feel the stress when there is something meaningful tied to them. In Oklahoma, high school students must pass four standardized tests in various areas or they do not earn a diploma, even if their GPA was a 4.00.

Standardized testing only evaluates the individual performance of the student instead of the overall growth of that student over the course of the year. Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) only focuses on whether a student is proficient at the time of testing.

Standardized testing causes many teachers to only “teach to the tests”. This practice can hinder 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 such pressure to get their students ready for these exams that they neglect to teach students skills that go beyond the tests.

Standardized testing evaluates a student’s performance on one particular day and does not take into account external factors. 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

1) Many teachers are (unjustly) accused of teaching to the test. Most do not do this, but some feel so much pressure for their students to achieve a specific score that they do end up teaching to the test, whether they want to or not. This can make school drudgery for students and steal teachers’ enjoyment of teaching.

In many districts, standardized exam results have become the single most important indicator of school performance. As a result, teachers and administrators feel enormous pressure to ensure that test scores consistently rise. Schools narrow and manipulate the curriculum to match the test, while teachers tend to cover only what is likely to be on the next exam. Methods of teaching conform to the multiple-choice format. Education increasingly resembles test prep. It is easy to see why this could happen in low-scoring districts. But some high-scoring schools and districts, striving to keep their top rank, also succumb. The pressure is so great that a growing number of administrators and teachers have engaged in various kinds of cheating to boost scores.

Harmful stress: Children are pressured to not only demonstrate their knowledge but to represent the effectiveness of their teachers and their schools. Teachers are reporting children throwing up, losing control of their bowels, and increased commitments for psychiatric and anxiety issues.

Lost learning time: There’s less time for learning with testing and test prep (for example, Pittsburgh students now take 20-25, or more, high-stakes tests a year, with new tests this year in art and music).

rade retention has repeatedly been proven to be counterproductive: students who are retained do not improve academically, are emotionally damaged by retention, suffer a loss of interest in school and self-esteem, and are more likely to drop out of school. The most comprehensive national study finds that graduation tests lead to a higher dropout rate for students who are relatively low-achievers in school, while they do not produce improved learning for those who stay in school.

Many students do not have a fair opportunity to learn the material on the test because they attend poorly-funded schools with large class sizes, too many teachers without subject area certification, and inadequate books, libraries, laboratories, computers and other facilities. These students are usually from low-income families, and many also suffer problems with housing, nutrition or health care. High-stakes tests punish them for things they cannot control.

Tests are called "high-stakes" when they used to make major decisions about a student, such as high school graduation or grade promotion. To be high stakes, a test has to be very important in the decision process or be able to override other information (for example, a student does not graduate if s/he does not pass the test regardless of how well s/he did in school). Currently, 17 states require students to pass a test to graduate, and 7 more are planning such tests.

Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Cows have 30 pairs. Other types of animals may have different numbers of pairs.

s researchers continue to refine their techniques and clone even more animals, some people are worried. So far, cloned animals haven't fared well, critics say. Few cloning attempts are successful. The animals that do survive tend to die young.

lones, like identical twins, are exact genetic copies of each other. The difference is that twins turn up without scientists' being involved and are born at the same time. Clones are created in the lab and can be born years apart. Already, scientists have cloned 11 kinds of animals, including sheep, cows, pigs, mice, and horses.

With the way that cloning research is going, you might someday get your wish. The United States government recently decided that it's safe to drink milk and eat meat that comes from cloned animals. The decision has inflamed arguments about human health, animal rights, and the difference between right and wrong.