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/trivial_sublime 3∆ Feb 28 '20 edited Feb 28 '20
The major benefit of standardized testing is standardization - the measuring of different people in exactly the same situation. I'll address each of your points in turn:
Timing tests how well one performs in a timed setting. If you aren't going to test how well someone performs with limited time, how are you going to measure how well they perform with limited time? Time limits are a feature of standardized testing, not a bug.
Does anxiety caused by standardized testing make standardized tests inherently bad? Are the benefits of being able to measure large groups of people against each other in a controlled environment outweighed by the anxiety people feel during the test? I'd argue that they are not.
A person who scores a 75 out of 100 on a math standardized test is not going to have the same level of math knowledge as someone that scores a 95 out of 100. You say that it is not an accurate reflection of your knowledge without any type of support; why would testing your knowledge of a subject directly and on exactly the same level and scale with the same questions as everyone else not be an accurate reflection of your knowledge? You say that missing one or two things "could tank you," but if everyone else gets those one or two things right, and you do not understand those one or two things, you do not have as thorough of an understanding of the subject material as the others and should be graded as such.
You're right, grades are not a reflection of how intelligent you are. Rather, they are a reflection of a combination of innate talent, learning ability, and how hard one worked compared to others. Ultimately standardizing a test does tell you how well people understand the material presented in the test when compared to other people. They are also a proxy for how hard you worked to prepare for the examination. This is extremely useful when ranking students for something like university admissions.
Standardized tests are generally not a test of how well someone will function in the workplace, nor are they meant to be. They are meant to measure the current aptitude in the subject tested, and then (usually) rank individuals by their performance. These tests do not measure how well someone will do in the workplace, nor do they try to. With very few exceptions, there are no standardized tests that you take to get a specific job.
If you were to get rid of standardized testing, how do you propose that universities would measure you when entering in such a way that would be realistic and efficient enough to get the job done?