Standarized testing

The idea of testing for knowledge and ability has vanished. State and school reputations have become more important. In “A Tyranny of Standardized Test” Botstein has a strong stand about the misuse and ineffectiveness of standardized tests. It is sad that a reputation of a school can mean more than a students education. So much money is wasted on the ineffective tests. “ We spend more than $200 million a year on it” (Botstein 19). The money could be used for better purposes than a school’s reputaion. Ravitch believes we need tests but there are many disadvantages to they way we use them.

With the focus of the tests being lost, tests do not effectively take into consideration how and what students know. Because the only important thing that comes from the tests is the results the students are not benefiting from t

“Good tests should include a mix of essay, problem-solving, short-answer, and even some multiple-choice questions”(Ravitch 25). Tests today rely too heavily on multiple-choice questions, preventing the student from thinking and encouraging them to guess. Multiple-choice testing does not show if a student knows any more than another student. For example, if student does not know the answer to a question they simply guess and get it wrong, but another student takes an educated guess and still gets the question wrong. Standardized tests do not show which student thought about the answer and which student just guessed; ultimately our testing methods are not effective in separating students. We are preventing students from learning, if we cannot separate and assess them properly.

There needs to be a better way to test. Because technology has greatly improved we can now update our testing methods. Computers can make it easier to get results back faster, so students can understand their mistakes and teachers can see where they need to improve their teaching skills. If teachers can use tests to asses students instead of test

Some topics in this essay:
Test” Botstein, Score Winning, test results, standardized tests, testing methods, student answer, students learning, student understands, botstein 21, teaching tests, students teachers, tests “,