Standardized Testing Criticism

It sounds similar to the idea of teachers "teaching to the test", as opposed to providing an all round education and critical thinking ability.

The problem is tests/quizzes and especially standardized ones. They have never been good teaching tools, and teachers have been railroaded into using them because they provide a blunt way to measure outcomes at a population level. But real teaching is 1:1 and teachers have a lot of power, it's just stuff that doesn't scale and you can't mandate organizationally. But this has mostly always been the case. Trying to measure student performance with a student who is more interest

There's a decent argument to be made that standardized tests distort the education system by making good test results the goal of teaching and attending class, rather than learning whatever the class is supposed to teach. To put it differently, it's not comparing students on the basis of tests that's the problem, it's what those tests cause the students and teachers to do in the year leading up to them.I used to be quite strongly anti-test because in my opinion, testing we

I think it's the testing that's the problem, more so than the standardization (although standardization can definitely be taken too far to the point that it's unhelpful). You can of course have a standardized curriculum without any testing at all. Countries like Finland put far less emphasis on test results, and a lot more emphasis on teacher's assessment of their pupils. It seems like a much healthier system to me.

You don't change a test to serve the needs of student, you change students to serve the needs of the test.

Standardized tests aren't there to measure students, they are there to measure teachers.

No it's a bad idea.You guys (Americans) had a great system which failed your weakest but managed to get you'll to the moon.And then for some reason your country decided it wanted to test like India and China.This is lunacy from where I stand. Having walked through the wringer in another country I know exactly what it becomes. Learning divorced from understanding.Stop testing, break class size in half, increase teacher pay and double the number of teachers. But no one wants to do that

There is also an issue of getting what you measure for since humans game systems to their benefit. Look at standardized tests - they guided education from an early age as opposed to actual educational outcomes. I remember vividly being in elementary school and they multiple workbooks with pages of analogies with occasional ambiguous answers. There wasn't any real learning just a bunch of drilling that depended on existing knowledge. Then the SAT dropped it for a writing section and analogie

Your first link, near as I can tell, doesn't even attempt to address the question of whether standardized tests are beneficial or harmful. It seems to be about the merits of vocational vs higher education.Your second link provides no data on whether testing is good for children. It merely shows that actual teaching methods do not conform to what the author's believe are the best teaching methods. No data is provided on student outcomes.Teaching is a highly dimensional task...How do you

Yes, I’m adamant. But schools are very slow to react and commercial initiatives are hardly a substitute for school curriculum at least where I’m from. School teach and then teach to test. So even a little bit different way of phrasing could throw a students ability to score the local test. In the long run you’d be learning but the signaling function of education is then missing. Plus what I notice in one of my kids: tests below his level get abysmal performance due to lack of interest. Again tea