Standardized Testing

Standardized Testing

A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner. The use of standardized testing in the United States is a 20th-century phenomenon with its origins in World War I and the Army Alpha and Beta tests developed by Robert Yerkees and colleagues. Campbell’s law states, “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures, and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor.” For the past decade there have been debates at the national level on whether or not standardized tests should be used to judge, rank, or classify a student's competency, and base that student's future academic performance at the university level off of it. The question is, are standardized test scores a good indication of intelligence and success at the university level – more specifically for freshman students? The answer is no, and these tests should be done away with.

However, there are people who disagree with this idea. They think that standardized tests accurately show a student's ability to process information and and to come up with the correct answer in a matter of minutes. They also say that standardized tests are time-sensitive, and that stands true to real world situations, especially at the university level, when assignments need to be turned in on a daily basis. This is not the case though. To draw valid references from a test, it must cover more than a small portion of the content domain. The authors of The Myths of Standardized Tests state that, “Time limits spread out scores even more. Life isn't a quiz show. As students can only sit and focus for so...