Globally, quality is one the core elements of the discourse around the issue of education, its impacts on the economy at different levels as well as its prospects. This is of particular concern given the present technological developments which are likely to impact the future of work. Due to this, educators world-over are faced with unprecedented pressure to prove their effectiveness. The principle means via which most education systems determine the success of teachers is through the performance of their students in the standardized tests. The tests are also used as indicators of the students’ ability. Therefore, when a school’s standardized test scores are high, the particular school’s staff members are likely to be considered effective, while the abilities of the students are viewed to be high. However, recently, there has been intensified debate about whether or not standardized tests are effective. One key argument is that since the wrong yardstick is being used to measure the quality of education, then the resultant evaluations are also more likely to be erroneous ( Morse, 2015 ; Meier, 200 2; Kohn, 2000 ; Neil , 1999 ). One of the key reasons why the quality of education, as well as the student's abilities, are being measured using standardized tests is the fact that most educators are unaware that standardized tests are likely to give misleading estimates of a student's ability as well as the effectiveness of the school staff. Therefore, this paper is aimed at illustrating why standardized tests are ineffective.
What are Standardized Tests?
A standardized test refers to an examination that is administered and subsequently scored in a manner that is both standard and predetermined ( Lyman , 1998) . There are two primary forms of standardized tests. These include achievement tests and aptitude tests. A standardized aptitude test predicts how well the targeted students are likely to perform in a given educational setting. The most common forms of standardized aptitude tests are the American College Testing (ACT) and the SAT. The two tests seek to predict how well high school students will perform once they go to college. Conversely, standardized achievement tests are used by school board members as well as the populace to evaluate how effective a school is. In the United States (U.S) there are five forms of standardized achievement tests. These include the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills, the California Achievement Tests, The Metropolitan Achievement Tests, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and lastly, the Stanford Achievement Tests.
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The creation of standardized tests is a tedious and highly technical endeavour (Yardley, 2000; Lyman , 1998 ). In creating the tests, the developers aim to come up with assessment tools that can allow an individual to come up with a valid inference regarding the skills and knowledge that a particular a particular student possesses in the context of a given content area. This inference ought to be norm-referenced in a bid to ensure that the relative knowledge, as well as skills of a particular student, can be compared with the ones possessed by a given sample of students of a similar grade level or age ( Lyman , 1998 ). This relative inference about the status of a student with respect to how well he or she has mastered a particular set of skills and knowledge in a specific subject area is very informative both to educators and parents. For instance, parents are more likely to discover what their children are good at and as a result can plan how to fan the area of interest. This information, since it illuminates a child’s weaknesses or strengths, can also assist the teachers in their pursuit of imparting knowledge. The parents can use the same information in developing home-assistance programs for the particular students. Further, if teachers are aware of how their students compared with those in other schools nationally, they might be able to use this information to compare their state with that of other students in the country. Using the comparative data, the teacher will be able to establish a more impactful classroom instruction.
Why Standardized Tests are Ineffective
Undeniably, there is a tremendous amount of information as well as skills that children at any given grade level are likely to be knowledgeable about. In this regard, the unprecedented amount of content sphere that a standardized test is meant to cover represents the first instance of difficulties to the developers of the different tests. This is because in reality, if a test was capable of covering all the skills and knowledge in a particular domain, the amount of information generated will practically be highly immense ( Neil, 1999) . Therefore, standardized tests, most often, are required to accomplish their measurement objective with a relatively smaller collection of test items so that would be used when the testing time is not considered an issue of concern. In this regard, it is critical for standardized achievement tests to carry out a sampling of the skills and knowledge in the content domain. Often, such tests seek to do their best to carry out their assessment using approximately 40 to 50 items in the particular subject field. In some instances, fewer numbers of items are used.
Standardized tests are aimed at achieving fairness, in which case they are expected to reduce both unfair advantages and bias significantly. However, in reality, performance in standardized tests is dependent on the quality of the prevailing school system, the materials covered in class, as well as the particular student’s financial status. By and large, these factors are undeniably characterized by unfair advantages ( Meier, 2002; Neil, 1999) . For instance, some schools have the benefit of increased access to financial assets that allow them to access materials that are likely to influence their performance in the respective tests significantly. On the other hand, others schools lack access to such materials implying that their performance is significantly compromised. If a particular school has access to specific essential source materials, textbooks, specific test guide, as well as technology, then they are highly likely to perform better compared to their counterparts. These schools, undeniably, ought to be considered as being more fortunate. This presents evidence of the existence of an unfair advantage because the quality of education in these schools is likely to be higher compared to that of their competitors. To corroborate this perspective, a teacher can perform his or her duties correctly. However, if the teacher lacks essential teaching resources and materials, his or her likelihood of significantly imparting the students with the right knowledge and skills is compromised substantially ( Popham, 2001) .
Furthermore, owing to the pressure mounted on the teachers and the school administration, there is a high likelihood that the teachers, as opposed to imparting general knowledge, will share the correct approach to solving the questions, which ideally implies that the students are significantly assisted in undertaking the test. In this case, the teachers are involved in abetting cheating ( Morse, 2015) . On the other hand, the students are more likely to memorize the answers to the respective queries as opposed to understanding the broader context. This is all done with the aim of ensuring that they achieve the highest possible mark in the tests. To a large extent, this beats the purpose of administering tests in the first place ( Sacks, 2015).
As a basic rule, the students are not expected to have undertaken practice standardized tests before the actual exam can be conducted. Secondly, the standardized tests are aimed at testing a student’s accumulated skills as well as his or her ability to a put these skills to proper use. This objective is as opposed to forcing the students to approach the particular problem robotically, followed by repeating the exact process of responding to queries as has been taught in the classroom. An important observation in this regard is the fact that the time spent teaching the students how to respond the test questions accurately can be used in sharing valuable information with the students ( Kohn, 2000) . This information is more likely to be of benefit in the future compared to the passing of a test ( Neil, 1999) . Moreover, students are expected to acquire unique skills from their respective teachers given that teaching styles from one teacher to another. Standardized tests are likely to restrict what teachers share in the class given the intensified focus on them ( Meier, 2002) . This challenge is reinforced by the fact that the curriculum is primarily pre-set.
Broadly, in context of the SATs, a more significant majority of students are likely to enjoy an unfair advantage in comparison to the few whose financial status allows them to receive an education of a higher quality. The advantaged schools can use the available financial resources to hire SAT tutors. The task of these tutors is to teach their students the most appropriate methods and techniques for solving the problems presented in the tests. This opportunity allows these students to perform better by receiving higher test scores. Therefore, it is indisputable that by having thee opportunities, this group possesses a crucial unfair advantage when compared to their counterparts that can’t afford to hire tutors ( Sacks, 2015) . Colleges use the information obtained from the SATs in determining acceptance. This implies that the privileged enjoy an unfair advantage over the others. Ultimately, the entry of a student into college should not be dependent on their financial resources. Since colleges do not consider the amount of resources used in preparing for the tests, the assessment and comparison of the students are ineffective ( Meier, 2002; Sacks, 2015; Popham, 2001; Neil, 1999).
Counter-arguments
The first counterargument concerning standardized testing is that the process of testing positively impacts the future retention of such material as opposed to studying it afresh. Lahey (2014) reckons that this is true even if the results of the test are far from perfect. Likewise, he argues that this ought to be recognized as the ‘testing effect,’ in which case testing enhances future performance. This is because while memorization has been considered a negative aspect, it involves the process of retrieving information, which ought to be regarded as a positive consequence. Further, testing aids in establishing areas that the students are falling short in, which can aid in teaching, both before and after the test ( Lyman, 1998) . Besides measuring knowledge, scholars have argued that the tests play a vital role in exposing the existing gap in knowledge so that the concerned teachers can accordingly adjust the future approaches to the particular instruction. Sharing these gaps with the students is likely to influence their future efforts of learning the information that they may have missed.
Possible Solutions
To solve the challenges associated with standardized tests, numerous strategies can be explored. Firstly, there is a need to create problems that are unexpected in the exams consistently. These problems should be aimed at enforcing new ways of thinking to replace the robotic approaches to learning that are aimed at drilling information into the students' heads ( Sacks, 2015) . Secondly, the new problems should be substantially different from those presented in the previous tests. If this is not done, it is challenging to address the issues of unfair advantages as noted above. This approach is aimed at ensuring that students have no option but to acquire the new set of skills. If the highlighted gaps are addressed, standardized tests stand a vital chance of being used as a benchmark for determining the performance of students in not only the various states but also the whole nation as a whole. Overall, unless multiple colleges consider the fact that performance in standardized tests is mainly dependent on the quality of the school system in question, the teaching materials used, and the financial status of the particular students, then the unfair advantages that confront the testing system will be difficult to eliminate.
References
K ohn, A. (2000). The case against standardized testing: Raising the scores, ruining the schools . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Lyman, H. B. (1998). Test scores and what they mean . Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Meier, D. (200 2 ). Will standards save public education? . Beacon Press.
Morse, J. (2015). Is That Your Final Answer? Educational Tests and their Measurements . Illinois: Sage Publications.
Neil, M. (1999). High-Stakes Testing Flunks. Retrieved from https://www.fairtest.org/high-stakes-testing-flunks-usa-today-op-ed-septemb
Popham, W. J. (2001). Standardized achievement tests: Misnamed and misleading. Education Week , 21 (3), 46.
Sacks, P. (2015). The Toll Standardized Tests Take . London: National Education Association .
Yardley, J. (2000). A Test is Born . Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/09/education/a-test-is-born.html
