Most high-school students have encountered standardized testing in some way or another. Whether it be the SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test), ACT (American College Testing), GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education), and dozens more around the globe; it’s fair to say that standardized testing has become a significant part of modern education. It’s used by colleges and universities to judge admissions, and also as a general academic metric for schools to measure how a student is faring in terms of intelligence and academic capabilities. But how accurate or useful is standardized testing really?
Standardized tests give the impression of fairness, with the same questions and same amount of time for each student to complete the test. For example, the ACT’s Math section has 60 questions and students are allotted 60 minutes to do them within. People have argued that simply having the same test for each student makes the test “correct”, and therefore accurately represents all student’s abilities. In reality, however, there are several factors that make standardized testing unfair and inaccurate when it comes to measuring student intelligence.
First of all, standardized testing favors students with socio-economic advantages. A study from the Washington Post shows how “students from families earning more than $200,000 a year average a combined SAT score of 1,714, while students from families earning under $20,000 a year only average a combined score of 1,326.” This is likely because wealthier families are able to afford things like test tutoring, prep books/services, and better education overall, like schools that offer PSATs, for example. It is unfair for these students to compete with their wealthier counterparts without having access to the same resources that they do. This imbalanced background creates an unequal testing environment, which affects the accuracy of the scores provided. If standardized tests are so easily affected by external factors as described above, then they can not be considered ‘precise’ or ‘fair’ measures of student intelligence.
Standardized testing also often only focuses on certain kinds of intelligence, neglecting the possibilities of students having more success in others. Creativity is an aspect of intelligence that is denied in standardized testing, which tends to only allow one correct answer. For subjects like math, this makes enough sense, but for others like language, it does not. Texts can be interpreted multiple ways, so having only one right answer invalidates the insight that comes from creativity, and broader thinking. Dr Sternberg, professor of human development at Cornell University says how while standardized tests “do account for analytical skills, they do not assess creative skills, practical skills, or wisdom-based ethical skills,” all of which should be equally as important as they all play parts in our everyday lives. The problem here is that with standardized testing, it forces and teaches students that there is only one type of smart they need to be in order to be considered so, when the reality is that there are far more ways to succeed intellectually-wise.
But perhaps the bigger issue here is that standardized testing has become used for “well beyond what they were designed to do, which is to measure a few areas of academic achievement” (Perry). We have started holding standardized tests to a standard that they were never meant to fulfill: we put so much value on these tests that were never able/meant to give us a holistic view of a student’s capabilities. Sure, standardized tests can give us a general idea of where a student is at in terms of specific realms of knowledge, but that is where their uses end.
(left image credit: Brookings Institution)
So, while the history and past uses of standardized tests have to be recognized, education is constantly changing and evolving. Standardized tests might have used to be a relevant resource for institutions, but with new technology and ideas, it is no longer necessary to default to an outdated method for evaluating students.
In short, standardized testing should not be used as a major factor in determining the capabilities of a student by colleges/schools. Not only is it inaccurate, but there are plenty of other ways to do so without sacrificing the integrity of having equal testing circumstances for all students nor without reducing intelligence to merely how well someone can score on one test.