Philosophical Vegan Forum

Hey all, after a bit of a hiatus, I've been wondering and thinking about the efficacy of standardized tests. I'll try to keep this brief.
Most students have been dreading the SATs, ACTs, and Regents that are coming up soon, and I do feel their pain. I remember taking such tests many years ago, and I was, and still am against them.

I see that standardized tests ultimately do more harm than good (if any good at all), and waste valuable time, money, and resources.

Firstly, and most obvious, the entire curriculum is based on these exams, particularly regents exams. As a result, this significantly narrows down what students can learn, and forces students who are unwilling to take the material learn it, or else they may lose a chance to get into a college that they may want to enter, or maybe will be denied their dream jobs and futures.

Secondly, it puts pressure on students to do well; in some states, students start taking standardized tests as young as eight! Fuckin' EIGHT. Now I'm pretty sure they're not terribly difficult, but the fact that we are giving more the most part useless tests on children and putting a ton on pressure on them on top of that says a lot to me personally. Why, may I ask? What are they attempting to accomplish with this? Not only does it pressure the students, the teachers are also under pressure, because if the students fail, the school loses funding. I would say, that it would make more sense to test the teachers to see if they know their shit, since they're the ones who are supposed to know it and use it all the time, right?

In short, I don't believe that standardized testing helps at all with learning, and is ultimately something that doesn't deserve to exist.

It's a necessary evil to know how good the schools are, how slack the teachers are and if the student needs to be caught up on something next year.

But agree with you about the curriculum narrowing down what the students can learn, teachers should be given more free reign to script their lessons to their own coursework.

I think this is entirely an American thing and they were created since there is such a big difference between the quality of a degree in one institution and the quality of the "same" degree in another institution. There is also uncontrolled grade inflation in many American schools so I guess the idea was to find a way to control this. Anyway, I don't think they are fair to students who get nervous and choke under time pressure who would otherwise to very well academically. Also, they are supposed to be a predictor of academic success but the more time one spends preparing for them the better one will do. I say scrap them.

However, I wouldn't mind keeping the specialised part of the exam. For example, before graduate school I had to do a GRE in psychology. Such tests are more fact based and doesn't involve too much head scratching so there is less pressure involved. Also, I think they are a fair measure of how knowledgeable a student is in that particular field and measures knowledge that takes years to acquire rather than a couple of weeks of cramming right before the test.

I would probably make the times at which you take the exam more flexible. Some kids are ready for the test 3 months in advance and await it in boredom, some others need more time. I don't think we should force them to take the same test just on the basis on which year they were born.

Life and evolution calls upon us to either compete or cooperate with almost everything we do in life.

End the competition for grades and you end the ability for the fittest minds to be rewarded for being the fittest.

If you do that, the least fit will likely slowly bring us all down to his level.

Man is a tribal and hierarchical self eugenicizing creature and to take away our education hierarchical levels would be helping the meek inherit the earth instead of having natural eugenics weed them out so that the fittest can be recognized as the fittest.

Regards
DL