A RealSchool-like project in AP English Language has Oriel, a junior at The Frisch School, researching standardized testing. The impetus for the research topic was Oriel's SAT prep; Oriel says the test has nothing to do with real life or any skills he may or may not have. Here are Oriel's preliminary thoughts on standardized testing:
In recent years, standardized testing has moved to the forefront of discussions concerning the American educational system. While standardized testing does have its merits, it is criticized by many experts to be an ineffective and unfair way of determining the breadth of a student’s knowledge. Standardized testing, dating back to the 1920’s, has been the most efficient way for colleges and other groups to objectively rank students based on their knowledge, allowing colleges to sift through hundreds of college applications at the blink of an eye in order to focus primarily on those with the higher test scores. While standardized testing is an efficient way of categorizing students and processing college applications, standardized testing is very limited in scope: it can only determine a given student’s knowledge in specific areas (and even this it cannot truly do). Standardized testing steals students’ identities and replaces them with scores. Standardized testing does not measure a student’s creativity, imagination, and thoughtfulness; on the contrary, these values, which are essential to life in “the real world,” are being destroyed by standardized testing. Standardized testing believes that there is only one right answer to a given problem – creativity has no place in the realm of standardized testing. Although standardized testing achieves much in terms of efficiency in evaluating students, its flaws outweigh the good it effects. Standardized testing has been a way to evaluate student performance over the past 90 years, but a change in the system is clearly necessary.
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