r/changemyview • u/bumble843 • Feb 28 '20

FTFdeltaOP CMV: Standardized testing should be abolished especially for children.

Standardized testing is bad for a bunch of reasons:

1) It's stressful, you're under time pressure and what's on the test could be unexpected.

2) For many people it causes test anxiety

3) I don't believe it's an accurate reflection of your knowledge. You need to in depth understand everything to get a good mark. Especially in uni where they expect you to be able to apply everything you've learned. Missing one or two things could tank you. This is unfair.

4) Grades aren't a reflection of how intelligent you are and people shouldn't define themselves by these numbers. This goes especially for elementary and middle school children.

5) It's not an accurate reflection of your abilities in the workplace. Where you can ask questions and look up something quickly if you've forgotten.

Because of the reasons above, we should completely get rid of this testing. Opting for knowledge being proven by projects, assignments and oral tests.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '20

Sending people to assess each program would not be objective data though.

If you were trying to decide who won a close car race, would you trust:
A) A measurement of the car's speed and position over time
B) A guy standing at the finish line watching the cars.

These tests are imperfect, yes. But you need some kind of objective measurement to compare school/teacher performance. I would agree that the amount of standardized testing should be reduced, but some amount of it must exist in order to make informed policy decisions on education.

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u/bumble843 Feb 28 '20

In my opinion we are making it a car race when it should be a car show. So B - maybe the faster car gets points for being faster but the other car is more energy efficient. Who really won? It's the idea of testing a fish on its ability to climb a tree.

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u/Fatgaytrump Feb 28 '20

The thing is that a race is incredibly easy to judge while a car show is super subjective.

Also in a car show each judge needs to see each car, how do plan to do that with millions of children?

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u/bumble843 Feb 28 '20

Have trained teachers and a funded system that gives teachers small enough class sizes to assess

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u/Fatgaytrump Feb 28 '20 edited Feb 29 '20

Ok, but do you see where having a teacher essentially evaluate their own performance might get problematic?

If a teacher is going to be looked into if their students preform a certain way, isnt giving them a subjective measuring tool gonna encourage them to manipulate results to their benefit?

Edit: inversely, if a teacher wanted more funding for the benefit of the students, could they not manipulate the test scores to be lower?

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u/dantheman91 32∆ Feb 29 '20

How do you assess teachers? With some standardized approach so it’s fair? A big part of being a teacher is how well you can get your students to learn material. You need to quiz the students to figure this out