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A Critique of Standardized Testing, and its Effect on Students

Northern Virginia Community College

ENG 112: College Composition II

Professor Katherine Pope

Jacob Butts
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In the United States, the education system in our country has been involved in a lot of

discourse and has been under speculation for quite some time. Relative to other industrialized

countries, the United States public education system has seemed to lag behind. It does not yet

consider the unique nature of how students learn in their environment, and this is highlighted

most obviously by the national use of standardized testing. In addition to the intrinsic structure of

American education, there is a market being exploited to manufacture these formulaic tests.

Corporations such as CTB McGraw-Hill, Riverside Publishing, and NCS Pearson dominate the

“testing industry” as public education gets stripped of government funding. Even when schools

are given a significant budget, a good portion is spent on purchasing these testing services that

can put minority students at a disadvantage. These testing companies have created a parasitic

relationship with the institution of public education and continue to propagate a lower academic

standard for our schools, and leech off of government subsidies at the expense of marginalized

students. Not only does this stunt the academic quality of the curriculum, but also negatively

affects marginalized students such as individuals from lower income households or minorities.

Standardized testing was first introduced to the United States at the start of the 20th

century, when psychologists were scrambling to find a way to quantify intelligence in an

individual, which was contextualized by racial bias. This originally manifested in college

entrance exams, which were starting to grow in popularity at the time. Despite the problematic

and elusive nature of trying to simplify someone’s intelligence, this way of testing has allowed

us to collect a large amount of data on education and test-taking knowledge. This is used in a

variety of ways from testing which lawyers are able to practice law through the BAR exam, or

analyzing if a diplomat is right for the job through a literacy test. This form of testing provides

valuable information for a wide range of broad topics and can be seen as a tool in many
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situations. The critical question that still stands will be is this a proper way to test our students,

and how much can we learn from standardized testing?

The United States education has never been able to compare easily with other developed

nations in terms of education. In a study published in 2018, they claimed that the United States

ranked #27 in “human capital”, which analyzes the education, ability to learn, and health of a

given population. (Lim, 2018) For one of the countries with the highest amount of gross

domestic product, this ranking shows that education for the working mass is being neglected. To

address this problem, the administration under George W. Bush implemented a new education

policy named No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This policy was intended to raise the standards of

United States education and put more accountability on teachers to instruct an organized class

course. The aftermath of this policy unfortunately started to contradict itself by implementing

stricter testing quotas, and introducing harsh consequences for failing to meet the standards set

up by the new reform.

The introduction of NCLB’s education policy had eventually led to far more standardized

testing in U.S. schools, with teachers adapting to this by “teaching to the test” and having their

course focus on what will be highlighted in the final exam. Math and science courses have fallen

victim to this problem, with teachers neglecting opportunities to support creativity and critical

thinking outside of how to answer a multiple-choice question. It should be discussed how these

tests help teachers, and what information (if any) that they could give to aid in helping teach

students. A nationwide survey from 1995 stated that teachers with more minority students on

average were more likely to agree that mandated testing shaped their instruction to the test, and

that it was “leading teachers to teach in ways that go against their own ideals of good educational

practice” (Lomax, 1995). This is another sore spot for standardized tests because teachers
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reported not getting any useful information out of using high-stakes formulaic testing, failing at

the purpose that puts it in place. Surveys such as this have looked into how these tests affect

teachers and students, which opens up the testing process to be heavily criticized. In higher

education, a report from 1994 found that parental income and education was strongly correlated

with testing scores on the graduate record examination, a standardized test that decided the

eligibility of applicants to graduate school. Out of 7,000 students who scored well, under 4

percent of test-takers had a parent that didn’t finish high school, yet 90 percent of test-takers had

a parent with graduate or professional degrees. (Sacks, 1997) The conclusion for these studies

show that not only do lower income students perform lower on average, despite no difference in

intelligence, but also highlights that these tests are not a reliable examination of knowledge.

These tests should need to re-evaluate how they assess their students, focusing on elements that

could best help shape a more holistic education. This includes taking teachers' input into account

as they would be the most understanding for their students. Outside of the classroom, it is

important for these voices to still be heard while making decisions about local policy.

The question now lies to what are the forces that are stopping education reform in respect

to standardized testing, and how can we properly use these resources for education? As you take

a look at the fervorous and ever-expanding market of “test-taking businesses” such as Pearson

and McGraw-Hill, a conflict of interest starts to arise around reform. These companies clearly

benefit from latching themselves onto public schools and seeping out the government funding for

testing. From 1980 to 1996 the company ETS, who is contracted to make the SAT exams by the

College Board, had its total sales rise from $106 million to $380.6 million with its profits

increasing by 256 percent, despite consumer prices also rising by 85 percent. (Sacks, 1997) This

shows how aggressive this market can be for big businesses and that there is a large incentive for
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supporting this way of testing. Another important player in the market for testing is NCS

Pearson. Not only does Pearson own the textbooks that contain a general outline of the course

and it’s information, but the official finalized test banks of public school academic testing,

disability placement testing, and the General Education Development (GED) exam. When

talking about Pearson, Arizona senator Kelli Ward commented that she “heard a lot from my

constituents about Pearson’s role. They’re very concerned that it’s taken over much of the

educational assessment arena ``, admitting that it seemed like a cause for concern, adding that

“it’s basically become a behemoth.” (Simon, 2015) To see a company that works in the

education sector operating for profit instead of academic benefit is dissociated from the goal of

educating and giving helpful preparation to students. Not only does it have an iron grip on the

tests that the average student encounters, but even reaching outside to determine how disability

placements are handled, and how to handle students that haven’t gone through traditional

education with the GED. It should not be acceptable to have a corporation, with its biggest

priority being to benefit themselves and make more money, working on education that is

affecting individuals that are a part of communities such as lower income families or disabled

individuals, as they are more susceptible to exploitation. The institution desperately needs to

sever the tentacles of corporations that have been embedded in standardized testing before

education reform can finally be realized and implemented.

In defense of standardized testing, supporters could claim that the process is cheap, and a

cost-effective way to gather large amounts of data on education. Would it be possible to consider

that education is something worth heavily investing into and should not be subject to cutting

corners or opting for less effective options. Assuming that we still use standardized testing, an

economic study that factored in opportunity cost for a typical urban school would lose $15
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million per test and $110 per student in a cost-benefit analysis. (Sacks, 1997) Even if the process

of running these tests seems cheap, overall it is more expensive having a population that has not

been able to achieve their actual potential in academia. Cost is one of the least concerns with this

way of testing, as the accuracy of scoring these rigid exams can also be called into question. In

an interview, an employee from Pearson claimed while he was working as a test scorer that

“when the scores we are giving are inevitably too low (as we attempt to follow the standards laid

out in training) we are told to start giving higher scores…” (Au, 2013) This inevitably leads to

multiple cases of mis-graded tests and inaccurate scores nationwide, affecting thousands of

students every year. In the state of Virginia alone, there have been six incidents in the past 15

years where standardized tests made by Pearson have had computer errors that interrupted the

test, or completely inaccurate scores where the company has either been fined or made to give

out free retakes. Although these issues are significant to point out, the worst outcome for

upholding the system of standardized testing is how it disproportionately affects young

minorities. A study from 2011 that interviewed minority students concluded that inequality based

on race, gender, or class could be perpetuated by educational practices, and that multiple students

claimed that students from poor families “don’t do as well in school as those from wealthier

families.” (Kearns, 2011) It is upsetting that despite a significant number of these students have

noticed that this educational practice does not work in their favor, their opinions have still not

been heard properly in the form of legislation and education policy. It is necessary for legislators

and local communities to fight against the current stigma around standardized testing and help

provide further solutions on how to improve the education of the next generation.

Going forward, public education in the United States needs to address the divide of

students based on family income and other socioeconomic factors surrounding high stakes
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standardized testing. The importance of these tests has fortunately started to slowly decline, with

colleges starting to base who they accept on personal assessments instead of less valuable

quantifiers like SAT and ACT scores. Although this is a good start, there still needs to be effort

put into helping marginalized students not get discouraged by these tests and pushed to fully

achieve the education they deserve. To advance the way we teach and avoid these issues, we

must identify new ways to help students develop their skills around creative and critical thinking.

The important change comes from organizing curriculums to cultivate a deeper thought process

around problem solving that students apply in their daily life.

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References

Au, W., & Gourd, K. (2013). Asinine Assessment: Why High-Stakes Testing Is Bad for

Everyone, Including English Teachers. The English Journal, 103(1), 14–19.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/24484054

Kearns, L.-L. (2011). High-stakes Standardized Testing and Marginalized Youth: An

Examination of the Impact on Those Who Fail. Canadian Journal of Education /

Revue Canadienne de l’éducation, 34(2), 112–130.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/canajeducrevucan.34.2.112

Lim, S. S. (2018, September 24). Measuring human capital: a systematic analysis of 195

countries and territories, 1990–2016. THE LANCET. Retrieved December 3,

2021, from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-

6736(18)31941-X/fulltext#seccestitle160.

Lomax, R. G., West, M. M., Harmon, M. C., Viator, K. A., & Madaus, G. F. (1995). The

Impact of Mandated Standardized Testing on Minority Students. The Journal of

Negro Education, 64(2), 171–185. https://doi.org/10.2307/2967240

Sacks, P. (1997). Standardized Testing: Meritocracy’s Crooked Yardstick. Change,

29(2), 24–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40165509

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Simon, S., Samuelsohn, D., Shutt, J., & Everett, B. (2015, February 10). No profit left

behind. POLITICO. Retrieved December 9, 2021, from

https://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026.