ELC501

ENGLISH FOR CRITICAL ACEDEMIC READING

ARTICLE ANALYSIS
Faculty of Business Management
BM231/3N
Cedrena Nadine J. Awang (2016674016)
Athirah Binti Abdul Jabar (2016674134)

The author of Bless The Tests: Three Reasons for Standardized Testing, Aaron
Churchills main idea is that testing should be standard as he suggest the importance
of it in his article. The criticism with PARCC, Ohios new English and Math
assessment for grades and high school has made the author to emphasize, from his
point of view, the main reasons for his stand, which are objective, comparative and
accountability, all referring to the teachers, the school and the parents themselves. The
authors argument is that the standardized tests is essential and should be practiced by
schools and any learning institutions. Mostly throughout the article, the author stands
in a biased position as he favours the implementation of standard tests by constantly
highlighting the merit of it. Thus, making the argument incomplete because the author
did not explain more of the benefits of having non-standardized test or the cons of
standardized test.
From the article, the authors purpose was to persuade the audience to accept and
support the implementation of standardized testing. He did this by explaining the
reasons testing should be standard to all student. From the three stated reasons, the
first was to make sure the teacher give honest and unbiased marking according to
what students deserve and not influenced by any other factor. Besides that, he
assumed that a clear system of standardized exam give comparable results, whereby,
he strongly disagrees that schools select their own assessment- a pick-your-ownassessment policy. He believes that only with a standardized test, the performance of
students across the country can be measured based on result benchmark. Last but not
least, the author is sure that standardized exam data will remain the best way to hold
schools accountable for academic performance.

Also, the article also possess self-righteous tone, in which the author fully
believes that his argument is tiptop and cannot be countered in any way. Not to forget
that the tone he uses is also evasive, in which he is not giving a direct elaboration with
clear supports. The authors intended group which he wants to tackle is a particular
group. Since the author would like to share the knowledge involving exams and
academic performance, the audience would most likely be members of the education
board, teachers, parents and students themselves. Even the words used relates to
education which means the readers are those interested in education and academic.
He assumes that standardized test can measure students performance in an equal
and fair manner. His argument is not objective as he did not base his points on facts
and other pertinent evidence. It is also an incomplete argument because the author did
not address the cons of having standardized test, also not mentioning any pros of
having zero standardized test. However, his argument is valid because it poses a
logical reasoning.
Authors argument has no strong support. For all his points: objectivity,
comparability and accountability, he only stress on it without giving a definite fact,
research findings, and personal experiences. The author, Aaron Churchill, is a
Research Director of Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who assist the school in ensuring
that the schools strategic and operational plans for research and knowledge exchange
are achieved. This means that he is an expert in this issue, therefore his opinion will
matter and is valuable. However, the overall quality of his support is still not strong
enough as the author states is according to his assumptions and not based on a study
or real research.
Based on the article, we come to conclude that there will be a lot more goodness
developed in the future if the policymakers decide to improve the integrity of the
states standardized test. This will be helpful to students, teachers, school authorities
and parents as well. For this, we agree with all the reasons how standardizing the tests
will give students the opportunity to be more aware of their abilities and potential is
acceptable.