by Sarah Michelson

Created on: February 13, 2009   Last Updated: March 30, 2009

Standardized testing, especially at a young age, is not a successful method of measuring literacy. Many students suffer from testing difficulties, like test anxiety, and there are already a large amount of standardized testing resources. Combined with the correlation between test scores and funding, any more testing will likely further cripple the U.S. education system.

There are many more effective ways to evaluate literacy, especially for younger students. Students with learning disabilities would have a greater ease of alternative forms of testing with non-standardized tests. While they may be less tangible, alternative evaluations would have less pressure on students and be more likely to provide actual, more accurate results. Students could demonstrate proficiency at reading and writing through actual reading and writing, evaluated by the teacher, or, in the need for more propriety, by a school official, especially if we continue the funding per test results system. This would eliminate the risks of cheating and the test anxiety that plagues many students.

However, standardized testing has greater risks of inaccuracy, skewing of results, or ineffectiveness of students. Many students suffer from test anxiety or cannot comprehend testing procedures. In addition, the testing for funds system leads to pressures on students from teachers, and there have been many instances of schools or teachers cheating the system. Testing is already very rigorous, and starts at a very young age.

This can be very stressful for young students as low test scores tend to demoralize students, leading to underachievement through the rest of their educational careers. Standardized testing is generally a flawed mechanism for evaluating the ability of younger students, and most students are tested for literacy during early elementary school years, though sometimes testing does not occur until later in the students' education. Either way, standardized testing at young ages is not an accurate representation of learning, and can be detrimental to the student's later academic success.

The testing for funds attitude is one of the main flaws of standardized testing, for it puts schools on a slippery slope. If they fail to properly educate their students, they lose funding, which, in principle, provides a motivation to do well. However, schools without the means to teach their students will naturally get low test scores, lose funding, and continue to be incapable of teaching. Rather than putting the emphasis on the individual students learning, schools must focus on maximizing scores, and therefore do not teach as well as they might if the evaluation was less balck and white.

Standardized testing is largely ineffective at portraying the education of students, especially younger ones, but is currently used in excess. There is no compelling reason to increase this usage, however, it would be much more effective to pursue more cumulative alternate forms of testing, that are less stressful and better suited for younger students. More rigorous testing would only further degrade our education system, and would make it more difficult to properly evaluate literacy.

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