Benefits of Standardized Assessment

Students take MCAS to show what they have mastered and also what they still need to work on, compared to the rest of the school, district, and the state. State testing usually occurs in April each year, and offers a snapshot view of each student's progress at that point in time to students, parents, educators, and stakeholders. Without state testing, this information may not be available to be viewed by people other than students and teachers, and occasionally parents. With the testing, the information is visible to all.

Assessments are an integral part of the culture of education, and if they are going to stay an integral part, they need to be done well. There are ways assessments can be very beneficial and significant for students and teachers. For example, “The assessment must have value other than "because it's on the test." It must intend to impact the world beyond the student "self," whether it is on the school site, in the outlying community, the state, country, world, etc. Additionally, the assessment should incorporate skills that students need for their future. That is, the test must assess skills other than merely content. It must also test how eloquently the students communicate their content” (Wolpert-Gawron, 2012). Assessments provide educators valuable information that can inform how lessons are taught and how classes and lessons can be planned with differentiation scaffolds and other strategic approaches to help students learn. Decisions can be driven with data from assessments to benefit students and districts overall. These types of planning and positive intervention are the changes schools need to see for positive improvement.

In order to use data effectively, teachers need to know what makes an effective assessment to serve students in the best way possible for their learning. “Thankfully, with the Common Core standards exemplifying the 4Cs -- Creativity and Critical Thinking (through performance-based assessments), Collaboration, and Communication (through the use of interdisciplinary writing) -- we are looking at a more fluid future in testing formats. As long as the format itself is aligned with real-world skills, a meaningful assessment does not need to be lockstep with a particular structure any more” (Wolpert-Gawron, 2012). By aligning these real-world skills, teachers and students will see the productivity of their work.

Drawbacks of Standardized Assessment

There are many limitations to assessment. Because of the high stakes that standardized tests hold students to, this creates a world of stress and anxiety for the students (citation that relates to increased anxiety due to testing), but teachers, in their stress, often teach to the test (citation), because so much of their career tenure (citation), pay bonuses (citation), and school levels are on the line and depend on the outcome. Some have even gone as far as cheating, telling students if answers are correct or not, erasing answers after the tests are over and writing in correct ones, or previewing questions to try and give students a heads up. This can create false achievement gains in the scores, which might look good on paper, but in the lives of the students, it didn’t really teach them anything, or at least anything that matters for their futures. When learning is measured in a classroom, teachers are looking at so much more than math and English, or multiple choice answers, or rigidly structured five paragraph essays. “(S)tandardized testing has inherent limitations. Some things (for example, factual knowledge), are very easy to test. Other things (complex analytical thinking and problem solving) are much more difficult to test, and some aren’t practical to test in this way at all” (Koretz, 2017, p. 14). Even subjects such as history and science are being left out of current curriculums in some schools. “Students who don’t learn social studies and science, for example, are poorly equipped to be informed citizens and will be less competent in many lines of work” (Koretz, 2017, p. 97). Why are these subject being left out, along with the arts and languages? Why are we making it seem like these things aren’t important, and with that, trust, relationships, and empathy? As Ng Chee Meng stated in his speech acknowledging the educational gains of Singapore, “Let them not just study the flowers, but also stop to smell the flowers, and wonder at their beauty” (Meng in Koretz, 2017, 23). Forming relationships between teacher and students will help students to “wonder” at their learning, and having that strong relationship between the assessor and the assessee will only make the results for the student’s learning stronger and more visible.