Standardized Test - Disadvantages and Criticism

Disadvantages and Criticism

"Standardized tests can't measure initiative, creativity, imagination, conceptual thinking, curiosity, effort, irony, judgment, commitment, nuance, good will, ethical reflection, or a host of other valuable dispositions and attributes. What they can measure and count are isolated skills, specific facts and function, content knowledge, the least interesting and least significant aspects of learning." — Bill Ayers

Standardized tests are useful tools for assessing student achievement, and can be used to focus instruction on desired outcomes, such as reading and math skills. However, critics feel that overuse and misuse of these tests harms teaching and learning by narrowing the curriculum. According to the group FairTest, when standardized tests are the primary factor in accountability, schools use the tests to define curriculum and focus instruction. Critics say that "teaching to the test" disfavors higher-order learning. While it is possible to use a standardized test without letting its contents determine curriculum and instruction, frequently, what is not tested is not taught, and how the subject is tested often becomes a model for how to teach the subject.

Uncritical use of standardized test scores to evaluate teacher and school performance is inappropriate, because the students' scores are influenced by three things: what students learn in school, what students learn outside of school, and the students' innate intelligence. The school only has control over one of these three factors. Value-added modeling has been proposed to cope with this criticism by statistically controlling for innate ability and out-of-school contextual factors. In a value-added system of interpreting test scores, analysts estimate an expected score for each student, based on factors such as the student's own previous test scores, primary language, or socioeconomic status. The difference between the student's expected score and actual score is presumed to be due primarily to the teacher's efforts.

Supporters of standardized testing respond that these are not reasons to abandon standardized testing in favor of either non-standardized testing or of no assessment at all, but rather criticisms of poorly designed testing regimes. They argue that testing does and should focus educational resources on the most important aspects of education — imparting a pre-defined set of knowledge and skills — and that other aspects are either less important, or should be added to the testing scheme.

In her book, Now You See It, Cathy Davidson criticizes standardized tests. She describes our youth as "assembly line kids on an assembly line model," meaning the use of standardized test as a part of a one-size-fits-all educational model. She also criticizes the narrowness of skills being tested and labeling children without these skills as failures or as students with disabilities.