In defense of standardized testing – a student’s perspective
Well, I really wanted to just ignore this piece recently printed in the Denver Post . . . not because I am censoring positive news about standardized tests, but rather because I just didn’t think there was anything particularly interesting, insightful or inspiring about the article. I read it. I yawned. I moved on.
Granted, it’s fairly well written for a high school student, and she’ll get nothing but my highest respect for being brave enough to “put herself out there” and writing about her experiences. But, even though I really, really wanted to like this piece of writing, I just couldn’t.
Apparently the rest of the edu-blog world disagrees with me, as the young author is being commended for her maturity and perspective. Is it just me? Could I be missing something? It is relevant, and it is timely, so who am I not to pass it along? I guess.
Personally, all I heard was tests are good because they prepared me to write more tests. The author didn’t say that she learned skills that would serve her later in life, outside of writing more tests. The author didn’t say that she learned time management. Nor did she report feeling good about having worked tirelessly towards a goal and later succeeding at it. As far as I’m concerned, the author did little more than reveal the shocking truth that there exists a correlation between “prior experience writing standardized tests” and “doing well on standardized tests in the future.”
Is that really the best defense the pro-standardized-test community can come up with?
Note: as I’ve written in a previous post and comments, I’m not yet weighing in one way or the other on the issue of the value of the tests. Rather, I’m evaluating the arguments with which we choose to defend or condemn standardized testing. By my count, the pro-standardized-test crowd is a distant second when it comes to argumentation.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader. If this is your first visit, please be sure to check out "starter kit" of articles. Then, click on the pages, posts or categories on the right that interest you for much more information about home school university admissions in Ontario and Canada.
you are simply a fool, my friend. simply a fool. there are very limited ways to see how our education system is working. there are no replacements of standardized tests, they are necessary.