Standardized testing and the dumbing down of America

Standardized Testing and the Dumbing Down of America

Testing is an institution which affects the lives of American people in a profound way . Early in their school years , children are classed and categorized based on standardized tests . In high school , such tests become even more life-determining as students largely base their decisions regarding higher education on the results of their test scores . Furthermore , decisions about graduate and professional schools are to a degree based on test results . Tests are also used to guide employment decisions and to determine professional advancement in

certain careers . Indeed , testing is all-encompassing and powerful in its influence on modern American life . The problem , however , is that testing is also difficult to control and check even when its effects appears to be unfair and /or counterproductive to the welfare of students and teachers . In this light , this argues that , because of the unfairness in the tests themselves and in the use of tests and test scores , standardized testing contributes to the deterioration of the American education

Basically , test bias exists when a test does not measure the same dimensions of achievement across different group (Green , 1975 . These biases can be due to content factors , norms , and testing situation . The major issue in a discussion of content bias is the degree to which test items may be more relevant to one group of students than to another - for example whether it is relevant to middle socioeconomic status (SES or to low SES . One may ask : Who writes the test items ' What groups the items are tried out on ? One may also point out the extent of dialect differences between the middle SES child and the lower SES child , and the existence of particular test items seen by many authorities to be difficult but irrelevant to the purported objective of the testing

Thus it becomes clear that standardized testing is not the solution for all groups . Particularly , African-Americans , whose average tests scores are lower than those of other groups , consider standardized testing as a major obstacle to their admission . Some schools and universities that are eager to have a fair representation of minority students either set different requirements for standardized test scores or give more weight to other factors , such as overcoming adversity , in coming up with admissions decisions

Another test bias concerns inappropriate test norms , in particular the so-called national norms . In using these norms , the performance of a student is compared with the norm arrived at through the standardization process . The concern here is how the samples of students comprising national norm are selected . While no norm will exactly fit any community , the perils of misinterpretation increase exponentially if the sample used in establishing the national norm does not include students from the major regional , racial , ethnic , community type and income groups

Moreover , if the samples used in establishing the national norm misrepresents or leaves out some group , then the national norm is a misrepresentation of the population . While there may be occasions when school...