The problem of standardized tests

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Standardized tests limit student learning and the teacher’s work by focusing on the institutional curriculum rather than the needs of the students.

The problem of standardized tests
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Reading time 2 minutes
Reading Time: 2 minutes




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Standardized tests limit student learning and the teacher’s work by focusing on the institutional curriculum rather than the needs of the students.

Photo: Bigstock

Standardized tests are intended to determine if the student graduates or not if the teachers are doing well and if the schools are improving. They are administered, qualified and interpreted in the same way to be able to compare the results of large groups of students.

With standardized tests, the teacher role changes, especially when dealing with institutional tasks in addition to their regular class work and activities. Several of the teachers’ responsibilities include collecting, organizing and analyzing data, grouping and regrouping students, developing the curriculum and coordinating student tasks. These tasks and institutional tests take between 60 and 110 hours in a year. To prepare students, teachers usually use predesigned curriculums that they did not develop and cannot modify to fit the needs of their students in their courses.

One of the most significant problems with standardized tests is that they eliminate subjects such as music, arts, social studies, and foreign languages in primary grades. They also limit the writing skills students need since many of the answers are multiple choice.Another limitation of these tests is that they can generate negative perceptions in students about their abilities and themselves, mainly when strangers apply the exams.

The application of standardized tests marked the beginning of a teaching era that forced teachers to guarantee good results instead of measuring whether they had learned the material or not.

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0