Standardized Testing Benefits

Standardized testing is a fundamental part of the American education system, and that has been the case for many years. During those years, such testing has provided the education system with some benefits. However, for the most part, this testing has had a detrimental effect on the quality of schools, how teachers teach, the education of students, and the American education system itself. As such, this kind of testing has proved to be more harmful than it is beneficial. As a result, it influences schools to inefficiently use classroom instruction time, encourages inefficient teaching methods, produces inaccurate scores, and restricts the creativity of students, a quality that they need. Standardized testing significantly undermines the efforts …show more content…
As is stated in “Fostering Creativity or Teaching to the Test? Implications of State Testing on the Delivery of Science Instruction,” an article concerning the effect of state testing on creative science instruction, “High-stakes testing often causes educators to lose sight of meaningful and creative science instruction” (Longo). This shows that standardized testing discourages many teachers from implementing creativity in their classroom instruction, which is a major component of effective teaching. Instead of promoting effective teaching techniques, such as those that inspire creativity in students, standardized testing encourages ineffective and teaching practices that promote rote memorization instead of understanding. As a result, “teachers nationwide are...moving toward more teacher-centered, lecture-based pedagogies that encourage rote learning in response to the pressure of the tests” (Au and Gourd). This demonstrates that standardized testing encourages teachers to teach students so that they learn through rote memory. Such teaching practices are ineffective because they limit students’ understanding of content, as students would make no attempt to understand the content if they were just memorizing it. As a result, standardized testing not only allows teachers to utilize inefficient teaching techniques, but it also encourages them to do …show more content…
Standardized testing restricts the genres, writing processes, and writing methods that students can explore and utilize. As a result, “writing instruction for...teachers...has succumbed to time, genre, length, and process constraints required by the tests, resulting in less student voice in writing, less integration of writing with other content, less time for students to explore diverse genres, and more formulaic writing generally” (Au and Gourd). This demonstrates that standardized testing significantly restricts the topics which students can explore, the content which they are allowed to put in assignments, the process through which they can do assignments, and the format in which they are allowed to do assignments. This significantly limits the amount of creativity students can utilize and develop. Standardized tests promote certain skills while discouraging others. They discourage, among many skills, creativity and wisdom. In “Testing For Better and Worse,” an article about the effect of standardized testing on intelligence, creativity, and wisdom, it is stated, “Becoming an expert in the skills required for taking multiple-choice tests may crowd out the skills needed for other life challenges — namely, those required for creative and wise thinking” (Sternberg). This shows that standardized testing ignores and disregards the other skills needed to deal with the challenges of life besides intelligence, which include

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