Samantha Kielar

Professor Ben Henderson

CAS 137H
October 21, 2015
Changing Views of Standardized Testing
Over the last few decades, some people in the United States became concerned
about whether or not high school graduates were truly prepared for a career or college.
All sorts of standardized tests became popular, to compare students, to compare schools,
to compare states. It was a mostly popular, nonetheless controversial phase in the culture
of American education. In 1988, a scholarly journal spoke out against what was called
standardized testing, or in the words of the author, cultural literacy tests.
In the present day, high school students who study or practice vigorously for the
SATs may be confused if they happen to see colleges advertising that they do not
emphasize SAT scores, or even require applicants to submit SAT scores at all. The views
people have in the United States on standardized testing have changed over the past forty
or so years, especially on the more recent end of that timespan.
Standardized tests have actually always been controversial. They originated in
the military in the 1920s with the goal of barring immigrants from joining the military, by
asking questions to which low income immigrants would not know the answers. Of
course, the standardized tests used in schools are different from that original type of
standardized test, and from that time to when they were first used in schools, the purpose
of standardized testing had changed. However, this history eerily echoes in the fact that

statistically, minority students tend to do worse on the SAT than white students (Stratton;
Starr).
Standardized testing has had critics from its beginning, but views about it have
undergone a shift in the past few years. One can see this even by simply searching for
standardized testing on the internet. Most of the results are critiques of standardized
assessments, and call to end practices that include teaching to the test. A paradigm shift
is evident because standardized testing would have never become a federal law without
the majority of public opinion supporting it, which is the exact opposite of what is seen
now.
When Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, its goal was to try
to make sure that high school diplomas represented the same level of qualification
throughout the nation. At the time, a high school diploma in the United States could have
many different requirements depending on the state and the individual school itself.
However, the No Child Left Behind Act seems to have been more trouble than it was
worth in the minds of most. In 2012, a majority of Americans polled by PDK/Gallup
believed that the significant increase in testing in the past decade has hurt or made no
difference in improving schools (Layton).
Some selective colleges say that they now have a new way to expand access, but
according to Jon Boekenstedt, associate VP for enrollment managing and marketing at
DePaul University, it is a mere PR stunt. The problem is that there is no universal
concept of merit (Moody, qtd. in Hooper).

Testing, because of its simple, numerical results that make it easy to compare,
increased in popularity and especially in practice. It was supposed to be fair, but poor
and minority kids were greatly disadvantaged. Merit tests were sometimes more like
cultural literacy tests. While they may have supposedly measured higher merit in those
who happened to possess socioeconomic advantages, they really measured something
closer to cultural literacy, which was a more challenging achievement for those with
socioeconomic disadvantages.
In a 2015 poll, also by PDK and Gallup, a majority believed that Americas
schools are too focused on standardized testing. What seems to have taken place is that
a change in practice was the cause of a change in perspective or opinion. The paradigm
shift may have been triggered by too vigorous of a change in practice, from little or no
standardized testing, to the implementation of many required standardized tests in every
state. However, it may have been more than just that. The increased criticism of
standardized testing may have been caused not only by the shift in practice, but that
change accompanied with misuse of test scores. People began to apply standardized test
scores as if they are exact scientific measurements, which they are not. The people who
developed standardized tests knew that it was not an exact science, and did not expect the
tests to be used as though a difference of a few points mattered (Starr).The broad
generalizations that some people make using standardized test scores may be be partly to
blame for the waning popularity of the tests.
Many people have now swung toward distrusting and disliking standardized tests
and any kind of federal involvement in education. Generally, they are wary of any test

children are required to take to graduate and may argue against the legitimacy of SATs
and ACTs as well. This can be positive in the opinions of some people, because it means
that people want education to be run in a simpler, more personal, way which does not
require federal involvement. Conversely, some people believe that a distrust of
standardized testing is harmful, because having standards in education is not an
inherently negative practice.
Standardized testing could be much better. When people say they disapprove of it,
it may be more accurate to say that what they dislike is high-stakes, multiple choice
testing. This is the style of most of the current standardized tests, and it does not always
measure merit or potential as much as people want it to. Sometimes a student may even
get questions wrong simply because of thinking in a way that is different from the way
the adults who made the test were thinking.
Take this excerpt from Choosing Excellence: "Good Enough" Schools Are Not
Good Enough by John Merrow, where he quotes George Madaus of Boston College:
The adults who write the questions sometimes lose sight of the way kids will
read those questions. There's a standardized test question that shows a cactus in a
pot, a rose in a pot, and a cabbage, and the question is which needs the least
amount of water. To the item-writer 'cactus' was the right answer, but some kids
pick the cabbage. And the reason they gave was that the cabbage had been picked
and so it didn't need water anymore. That's a perfectly good answer, but the
machine had been set to score it as wrong. Students who get the "right" answer
have demonstrated, perhaps, that they think like an adult -- or like the test-maker.

The kid who thinks differently, or whose frame of reference is different, is marked
down, and perhaps eliminated from the competition. (Merrow)
Can there be standardized testing that is not high stakes multiple choice?
Common Core may be a possible alternative. However, the distrust of laws about
standardized testing may cause people to assume that Common Core is no different than
the tests put in place from the NCLB Act, or even that Common Core is even less
personal. It is likely that this is an issue that will get a lot of attention in the media over
the next decade.
Always controversial, standardized testing, especially high stakes, multiple choice
testing, used to be thought of as a solution to bring all schools in the United States to the
same standard, so that high school diplomas meant the same no matter what school they
were from. They were supposed to make sure that no child was left behind in the
American system of schooling. After the tests were put in place, however, public support
for them began to decline. In the past decade, especially, there has been a shift in the
view the majority of the public has on standardized testing. It would seem that currently,
most of the country can agree that standardized testing is not helpful, that it is not
effective in solving the problem it was meant to solve in American schools.

Works Cited
Hoover, Eric. "80 Selective Colleges Unveil Plans for a New Application - and Inspire
Some Skepticism." The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle of Higher
Education, 29 Sept. 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.
Hoover, Eric, and Becky Supiano. "College Admissions Isn't Fair ... Whatever That
Means." The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education,
2 Oct. 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.
Layton, Lindsey. "U.S. Schools Are Too Focused on Standardized Tests, Poll Says."
Washington Post. The Washington Post, 23 Aug. 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.
Mangan, Katherine. "High-School Diploma Options Multiply, but May Not Set Up
Students for College Success." The Chronicle of Higher Education. The
Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 Oct. 2015. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.
Merrow, John. Choosing Excellence: "Good Enough" Schools Are Not Good Enough.
Lanham: Scarecrow, 2001. Print.
"Standardized Test Definition." The Glossary of Education Reform. Great Schools
Partnership, 15 May 2013. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.
Starr, Joshua, and Andy Smarick. "Why Americans Are Turning Against Standardized
Tests." Here Now RSS. WBUR, 27 Aug. 2015. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.
Stratton, R. E. "Cultural Literacy, Standardized Testing, and Charlottesville Arrogance."
ProQuest. Radical Teacher, 31 July 1988. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.