Standardized Testing

Standardized testing has become one of the most "hot topic" issues in the discussion of modern education. Defined as any test that is administered and scored in a consistent or "standard" manner, standardized testing has become synonymous with the large-scale, quantitative state-wide testing that most of us have become accustomed to (and most likely came to dread if we're being honest). While Standardized testing started as a way of quickly assessing students' knowledge and progress through a curriculum, it has transformed into a highly pressurized way of defining student achievement in order to be compared with other students, schools, districts, states, and even countries as a whole. Standardized testing can provide valuable information about what students do or do not know and whether they are meeting state educational standards when implemented in moderation, but at what level do standardized tests stop measuring student's understanding of content, and begin to simply measure a student's ability to take a test.

Three students are seen sitting at their desks
 actively engaged in marking their paper

 For me personally, standardized testing was all about the competition of grades and getting my tests turned in as fast as possible rather than really showing a mastery of the content. I really thrived under the high pressure situations that testing in my school created, and that many students have come to associate with testing anxiety, and the concept of just being able to put down the answer and move on without having to put in much thought was what I was good at. I learned very quickly how to use the standardized format of the test to my advantage and to hone in on certain skills such as speed reading, that would put me ahead of others on the test rather than focusing on studying the actual content. I honestly hated taking tests with formats other than multiple choice / true/false because I became very used to the crutch that standardized testing allows if you know how to work the test. I once had a test-prep teacher tell me that there were two ways to pass the end of year tests, either study the content and actually know what's going on, or to get good at beating the test and while he wished we had time to cover all the content, it was just easier to teach us to beat the test. 

I think that overall, standardized testing can be a very powerful and informative tool for many different areas, but not in the way that it is used now. I think with how much it is used in schools today, there is no room for students to really gain a deep understanding of the content because there is so much content that is required to be "learned" for the test that student's are forced to make the distinction between information that they believe will be on the test and therefore must be memorized and all other irrelevant information that they don't have the time to truly learn. It becomes a constant state of cram and dump in order to make room for new information that might be on the next test.