Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States

Essentially, your article covers both the pro and the con. Standardized test promote teaching a test rather than teaching critical thinking. On one hand you have a student who can pass a test but fails to apply their knowledge to a real world scenario. On the other hand you have a student who can take the various facets of a problem and create a solution that adheres to the nuances and minutia of that problem. Furthermore, Thomas Armstrong analyzes short comings of the standardized testing system: Because so much emphasis is placed on standardized test results these days, teachers are spending more and more time "teaching to the test." If there is something that is interesting, compelling, useful, or otherwise favorable to the development of a student"s understanding of the world, but it is not going to be on the standardized test, then there really isn"t any incentive to cover this material. Instead, most of classroom time consists of either taking the tests or preparing for the tests, and this shuts out the possibility of learning anything new or important. For example, because the No Child Left Behind Law (NCLB) only tests reading, math, and science that means that art, social studies, physical education, history, and other subjects are given far less attention than used to be the case. Standardized tests occur in an artificial learning environment: they"re timed, you can"t talk to a fellow student, you can"t ask questions, you can"t use references or learning devices, you can"t get up and move around. How often does the real world look like this? Prisons come to mind. And yet, even the most hard-headed conservative will say that education must prepare students for "the real world." Clearly standardized testing doesn"t do this. Standardized tests create stress. Some kids do well with a certain level of stress. Other students fold. So, again, there isn"t a level playing field. Brain research suggests that too much stress is psychologically and physically harmful. And when stress becomes overwhelming, the brain shifts into a "fight or flight" response, where it is impossible to engage in the higher-order thinking processes that are necessary to respond correctly to the standardized test questions. Standardized tests reduce the richness of human experience and human learning to a number or set of numbers. This is dehumanizing. A student may have a deep knowledge of a particular subject, but receive no acknowledgement for it because his or her test score may have been low. If the student were able to draw a picture, lead a group discussion, or create a hands-on project, he/she could show that knowledge. But not in a standardized testing room. Tough luck." (http://institute4learning.com...) At the end of the day it comes down to what you value. If we continue to put undue interest into the importance of standardized tests, we may generate a general testing template but we lose creativity and ingenuity in the long run.However, if we allow the classroom to foster creativity and critical thinking, we will in turn create a generation of people who are able to tackle the complex problems that face our world today. As it stands now, the status quo of standardized testing is detrimental to US education and should thus be reformed.