Standardized Testing Synthesis Essay

Words: 1075
Pages: 5

The Obama administration sought to repair this broken system called No Child Left Behind. Although the administration was not able to pass a new education bill, they allowed “waivers” to 42 states, which allowed those states to get out of the impractical standards set by NCLB (Whitehurst). In exchange, states set standards aiming to prepare students for higher education and the workforce. “Waiver states” as they were called, were able to use either the common core state standards or get their higher education institutions to certify that their standards were fitting for the grade level of the students. Furthermore, they installed teacher evaluation systems, although the harms of NCLB were minimized, the teacher evaluation system still used state standardized tests to track students progress. In New York City, teachers are evaluated in two …show more content…
Students have slowly learned simply how to take tests rather than comprehend and analyze information. The following satirical image alludes to the fact that students are simply taking tests while failing to acquire real world skills that they would need to use in jobs later in life. Furthermore, an aspect of standardized tests that often does not get mentioned is how it can deteriorate the mental health of students. Standardized tests can be draining as students tend to study for a test several days prior to it, leading to a lot of anxiety and stress which leads to them not getting good scores, which don’t properly show how much the students learned. In Ohio the pilot common core state testing led to 8 hours of testing for the fifth graders. According to an Ohio teacher, Neely-Randall, “One student couldn’t handle the stress of all of these tests and broke down in the middle of one. ‘She had a complete meltdown,’ Neely-Randall told the HPR. ‘And I could do nothing to help her, I