Standardized Tests

No matter how old you are, you’ve taken one. Your best friend’s taken one. Your doctors, teachers and even your parents have taken one. You’ve probably taken several of them. Whether it’s to advance grade levels, obtain admission into a college program or determine your eligibility to become a lawyer, there’s no avoiding standardized tests.

According to the Handbook for Measurement and Evaluation in Early Childhood Education, a simple set of criteria classifies these inevitable exams:

• They include specified procedures for administration and scoring.
• Test items result from experience by experiment or observation rather than theory.
• They have an established format and set of materials.
• They present the same tasks and require the same response modes from all test takers.

Common standardized tests include the BAR Exam, ACT, SAT, LSAT, MCAT, GRE and GMAT. Middle school and high school students must also take state standardized tests. Students are trained from early adolescents to take these exams—they are unavoidable.

Much controversy surrounds standardized tests. Experts from different sides debate how effective the tests are in truly measuring students’ intelligence and whether they’re a fair tool for students spanning across extremely diverse backgrounds.

The primary argument of those favoring standardized tests is that the test results can be quantified and compared. Grade point average scales and level of academic difficulty differ from school to school. What is a 3.0 at a highly-academically ranked school might be a 4.0 at a school not as academically challenging. Because there is no common method in evaluating students, standardized test scores are aimed at providing academic institutions a universal scale in which to measure students’ knowledge and skills.

Parents, educators and politicians also like to use standardized test to determine how successful a particular school is teaching various subjects. Teachers are encouraged to base their curriculum plans around the students’ strengths and weaknesses derived from the tests to increase scores.

The public also generally feels better going to a doctor or lawyer that has passed a legitimate skill and knowledge test. Who wants to have open-heart surgery performed by someone whose skills aren’t based on a common measuring ground? For all you know, Dr. What’s-his name could have graduated from Coo Coo Medical School.

On the other side of the argument lies those opposing standardized tests claiming that the exam scores are not a true measurement of intelligence and exclude artistic skills and critical thinking. At the forefront of the line is the National Center for Fair and Open Testing that doesn’t think standardized tests are fair and helpful assessment tools because they reward the ability to quickly answer questions not involving an actual thought process. A big part of its views on standardized testing is that the only objective part of the exams is the scoring done by a machine. Everything else, such as the questions, question wording, determination of the “correct answer” and rules, is done by subjective human beings. The center urges that good teacher observation, documentation of student work and performance-based assessment will much better determine students’ abilities.

Maybe someday proponents from both sides will be able to come together and reach some sort of agreement on a universal way to measure students’ abilities, but until then standardized tests seem to be the only obvious alternative. Learn more about the pros and cons of standardized testing.

Relevant Links

Education Testing Service
What's wrong with standardized tests?
Discrepancy between SAT and ACT
Graduate School Admissions Tests
List of Standardized Tests for College Admission

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