Question: Do standardized tests improve education?

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States Support for the Pro position of this resolution if bountiful and defensible in a properly framed debate. At the outset, the Pro debater needs to recognize there is significant negative press against standardized testing arising from a multitude of factors, many of which are unrelated to the question of whether or not standardized testing is beneficial to student education. These negative factors poison the well and spread the perception that because some elements related to standardized testing are undesirable, then standardized testing in general must be undesirable. This, of course, is a logical fallacy; a kind of fallacy of composition in which one draws conclusions about a whole based upon an examination of smaller portions. Standardized testing is a tool and like any tool can be designed for specific purposes. We shall examine those purposes and their effect on education and we will scratch the surface of an abundance of studies which measure the effect of testing on students. Much of the research extends back several decades and is still cited in research journals today. A Basic Definition To clarify the position, I will provide a definition for standardized tests which describes their nature and their purpose. JCCHD (undated): A Standardized test is a test that is given in a consistent or "standard" manner. Standardized tests are designed to have consistent questions, administration procedures, and scoring procedures. When a standardized test is administrated, is it done so according to certain rules and specifications so that testing conditions are the same for all test takers. Standardized tests come in many forms, such as standardized interviews, questionnaires, or directly administered intelligence tests. The main benefit of standardized tests is they are typically more reliable and valid than non-standardized measures. They often provide some type of "standard score" which can help interpret how far a child"s score ranges from the average. Based upon this definition we can surmise that the test may be administered by a school in accordance with some over-arching direction or purpose and may be required by local administration or government or at the state level. A key principle is the test must be administered and assessed in a standardized and consistent way aligned to the purpose it is designed to serve. Key Advantages Standardized tests offer advantages to school system administrators which are not possible with in-class testing and assessments designed and graded by teachers. The key advantages are objectivity, comparability, and accountability (Churchill 2015). Depending on the type of test one teacher's evaluation of a student's test may be different than another teacher's evaluation of the same student's test results. This variability can result from a lack of objectivity in the design or assessment of the test and lead to different impressions of a student's level of achievement. Standardized tests are designed to greatly reduce subjective grading. Often, standardized tests are assessed by computers rather than humans. Not only does this reduce costs by eliminating the need to pay graders, it enforces objective standards. The second major advantage is seen when a local school board needs to determine the overall level of achievement of, say sixth-graders in several different schools within their jurisdiction, Standardized tests ensure that all of the sixth-grade students will be evaluated on a common, objective standard. This allows a fair evaluation of sixth-grade achievement and helps determine which schools or classes may be in need of improvement. Objectivity and comparability are both necessary to realize the advantages linked to accountability. School system administrators use the tests as a feedback mechanism for the schools and classes to alter curriculum or resources in such a way they can benefit student achievement. Accountability requires the individual schools and instructors demonstrate forward progress in achieving the goals of the school administration. From Feedback to Blowback I do want to spend a little time discussing the downside of standardized tests because I believe a thorough evaluation and acknowledgement of problems increases the Pro ethos. Accountability is pushed by governments intent on maximizing their educational dollars. Obviously, an administration concerned with high costs will tend to view standardized tests as a mechanism for achieving goals for the least cost. First, the cost of testing is relatively cheap and secondly standardized tests can potentially isolate problems in individual schools, classrooms, or teachers putting increased pressure on those systems and individuals. Moreover, politicians can use accountability to enhance their own political statuses. Merrow (2001): But the fundamental problem is that many schools and school districts use standardized test results more for accountability than understanding or diagnosis. I'm not blaming educators for this situation, because they're only following orders. H. D. Hoover of the University of Iowa defends testing but agrees we've gone overboard. He places the blame squarely on politicians. "They want quick fixes, and they like tests because they're cheap. They mandate external tests because to the public it looks like they're doing something about education when all they're doing is actually a very inexpensive 'quick fix.'" When accountability increases pressure on school districts in a heavy-handed way, students are often re-categorized for failure to demonstrate achievement above a particular "cut-line" which alarms and often angers parents. Teachers are pressured to increase the performance of students and some teachers are viewed as professionally incompetent. All of this pressure results in negative attitudes about standardized testing and leads to abuses which have resulted in overly narrowed curriculum which focus entirely on the tests, and in extreme cases, cheating. All of these negative impressions ripple through communities and result in the perception standardized tests are the problem. The link between the home and the administration is the classroom and the teachers themselves play a significant role in the success or failure of the testing programs. Brown & Hattie (2012): The belief systems of teachers are a significant factor in whether standardized tests can be educationally useful. Clearly, pre-existing beliefs that standardized tests are irrelevant can and will influence how teachers respond to the possibility of using tests educationally. But there are other options for understanding the purpose and nature of assessment; assessment can evaluate schools, it can evaluate or certify students, and it can be for improvement (Brown, 2008). For example, in the development of the asTTle standardized tests system, it was found that teachers who endorsed the conception of assessment related to "assessment is powerful for improving teaching" had higher interpretation scores on a test about the meaning of the asTTle test score reports (r = .34). In contrast, teachers who endorsed more strongly the conception of assessment as a means of evaluating or holding schools accountable had the lowest interpretation scores (r = -.21) (Hattie et al. 2006).Thus, successful use of standardized tests requires believing that they can contribute to improved teaching and student learning for the individuals in a teacher"s class. This belief leads to more accurate interpretation to the educationally useful information communicated in standardized test reports.[290] We can see tests as simple measuring systems which serve as an important tool in guiding the educational development of students. Ultimately it is how those tools are used and people's attitudes about how the tools are used which guides perception of whether or not the tests are beneficial. No doubt it guides the perception of the PF debate judge as well.

on balance standardized testing is benifical for k-12 education Hello! my name is Thomas brooks and I stand in affirmation of the resolved, On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K"12 education in the United States. We have three contentions to bring to you today. 1" standardized testing compares schools, 2" Standardised testing improves k"12 education, 3" On balance standardized testing has a positive effect on student achievement in school and in life. Point one) Without standardized testing, their would be no way to compare schools, and assure that they were meeting their constitutional standards. The fourteenth constitutional amendment requires fair and equal treatment to all, under protection of the law. The Supreme Court Case Brown vs. Board of education in 1954, Officially legislated that the 14th amendment applied to all education laws. Therefore, It is our constitutional right to receive an equal education. If there is no way to compare schools, there is no way for individuals to know whether a student is receiving a substandard education, vandalising our constitutional right. Without standardized testing there would be no form of comparison and equality would not be obtainable. This leads us into our second point. Standardized testing has made tangible the quality of education a school provides, and created accountability in not just teachers and schools, but in districts and states . This has benefited educational mandates in funding in two irreplaceable ways. 1) The implementation of NCLB has enabled schools to sue states for failing to provide standard and adequate teaching facilities. Study conducted by David G. Sciarra, shows direct correlation to how the instatement of No Child Left Behind created accountability to state and government to provide a standard of school safety conditions. The study focuses on, but is not limited to a number of lawsuits in states New Jersey, Ohio, Alabama, Arkansas, New York, Wyoming, Arizona, Idaho, and California where severely underfunded schools that lacked resources, and dew to the passing of the NCLB had the legal grounds to obtaining equil funding and such from the state improving the education of their students. 2) The second way standardized tests have improved education is in actually reforming state legislature dictating funding. Since the 1970"s, when statewide standardized tests became more common, there was an increase of court cases discussing that different funding was required to support different schools. These arguments are called "adequacy" suits. The arguments are based in the belief that a school that supports a larger population of students, or educates students that live in poorer demographics need more state funding, and can not rely on property tax. Plaintiffs fundamentally rely upon low scores on standardized tests, and high dropout rates as proof that the state has failed to provide an adequate education for substantial numbers of its children. Standardized tests have created greater equality in school funding. Our Third contention is that on balance standardized testing has a positive effect on student achievement in school and in life. Test anxiety is real, and it is true that both high and low stakes standardized tests can create stress in K"12 students. However, post primary education is also depended on high stakes assessments, similar to those of standardized tests. Students who participate in standardized tests will be more prepared to face future educational, occupational, and professional goals. Such tests include those pertaining to college admission and success, occupational licensing for trades such as law and medicine. Standardised tests are the only way to insure that individuals have the capability to obtain and equal education, key in creating safe campuses, and fundamental in legislature allocating school funding. Furthermore, Standardized tests prepare students for the stress in taking high stakes tests later in their life. On balance, standardized tests are imperative to improving k"12 education, and benefit it in many ways.

Standardized tests ensures students learn essential information. There is some information in the world that is essential to know as a means of communicating effectively and analytically with other individuals in society, whether as a citizen or in the marketplace. Standardized tests help ensure that all students learn this important information. It is true that this information can be cut-and-dry and perhaps even boring, including history, literacy (reading comprehension), and math. Yet, it is, nevertheless, essential, so testing for it and ensuring students know the information is socially and educationally valuable. Yet, it is also true, that this essential information does not constitute all the information that a community may believe their children should know.

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States Racial Bias is actually exacerbated by standardized testing: "In the case against the Texas TAAS test (see related story), plaintiffs presented research showing that standard test-construction methods built in racial bias. The judge concluded he "cannot quarrel" with that finding. Groups concerned about civil rights should use this argument to oppose the use of tests to make high-stakes decisions, such as school graduation or grade promotion. According to a declaration by Prof. Martin Shapiro of Emory University, who is both a lawyer and a psychologist, Texas uses "point-biserial correlations" in deciding which items to use and which questions to discard as the test is assembled from field-tested questions. Items with high biserial correlations are those generally answered correctly by test-takers who score high on the test overall. Items which many low-scoring students get right have lower correlations. To obtain higher consistency (and hence technical reliability) on the test, Texas follows the typical practice of using items with the highest correlation values. This procedure means that on items covering the same materials, the ones with the greatest gaps between high and low scorers will be used. Because minority group students typically perform less well on the test as a whole, the effort to increase reliability also increases bias against minorities. According to other research, items which facilitate ranking and sorting are often items which, perhaps unintentionally, factor non-school learning and social background into the questions. Such items help create consistency in test results, but they often are based on the experiences of white middle-to-upper class children, who also typically have access to a stronger academic education. This test assembly approach was developed in large part to help obtain consistency on tests designed to rank and sort students, such as IQ tests, the SAT, or national, norm-referenced achievement tests (NRTs). While procedures which reinforce racial and other biases should not be used in any case, tests such as TAAS now rely on biserial correlations -- even though the TAAS supposedly is not intended to sort students but to determine whether they have met specified levels of achievement. By using this method of item selection, the TAAS, like many other state "criterion-referenced" or "standards-based" exams, is actually constructed to resemble an NRT. This common test development procedure exacerbates the existing inequities of schooling. When used in high-stakes testing, biserial correlation helps ensure that at least some students who know the material and ought to pass the tests do not. Those students are overwhelmingly low-income, of color, with English as a second language, or have special needs." (http://www.fairtest.org...) The pro has no benefits except the fact that standardized testing may alleviate racial bias however, as the information provided by fairtest.org states, racial bias is further accentuated by standardized tests. As stated before, standardized test do not promote education, performance, or passion. That hollowness creates staid thinking and in a world that is constantly moving forward leads to regression.

National, standardized tests are a poor measure of student learning Standardized testing is not perfect, but it helps to sets useful standards that help student learning. It is important that a nation has a general frame of reference on where students should, on average, be at various stages in their education. Standardized testing helps do this by setting a baseline level of achievement at each grade, where the average student is expected to be. While some students may perform above or below this standard, the important thing is judging the general educational trends across society, so that governments can help guide their national educational system onto a globally competitive path. improve this

Education: Testing Standardized testing is a efficient strategy that improves the work, effort, and dedication teachers put into their job. "Education researchers gauge the quality of an individual teacher by looking at student test scores. If scores go up in a teacher's classroom, that's a sign the teacher is doing a good job" (1). This is, and has always been, a just way to measure teachers' ability to build their students knowledge. In addition, most teachers and administrators approve, even, of these standardized tests, "Minnesota teachers and administrators interviewed for a study in the Oct. 28, 2005, issue of the peer-reviewed Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA) approved of standardized tests 'by an overwhelming two-to-one margin,' saying they 'improved student attitudes, engagement, and effort.' An oft-cited Arizona State University study in EPAA's Mar. 28, 2002 edition, concluding that testing has little educational merit, has been discredited by educational researchers for poor methodology, and was criticized for wrongly blaming the tests themselves for stagnant test scores, rather than the shortcomings of teachers and schools" (2). Not only does the government believe that standardized test are a quality way of judging teachers based off their students' work, but the majority of teachers do as well.

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States Standardized Tests Can Help Combat Inequity Bobb 15 By: Robert C. Bobb, Aug. 30 2015, Copyright " The Washington Post Company Aug 30, 2015. All rights reserved. Reprinted with Permission http://sks.sirs.com... Disparities in educational achievement between low-income minority students and their more affluent peers loom large despite years of work to close the gap. Some point to this as a reason we should back away from accountability-driven endeavors such as stronger state standards and aligned assessments. In fact, it should motivate us only to redouble those efforts and push boldly forward. Civil rights leaders and testing opponents have been locked in a fight over this issue . Testing critics say the lack of significant improvement among economically disadvantaged minority students - despite years of standardized testing - proves that tests do little to close the achievement gap and in fact only exacerbate inequity. Civil rights advocates, in turn, argue that the tests provide data essential to understanding the magnitude of the gap in student performance and highlighting the need to fix it. Four years ago, we were on the right track. That was when a bipartisan group of governors embraced a set of universal educational ideals that became known as the Common Core State Standards. They worked to focus on the bedrock skills and knowledge all students need to succeed in school and after regardless of their individual circumstance or the career path they chose to pursue. Developed with heavy input from educators, the standards emphasize critical thinking, reading and math skills. They also measure students' readiness for success in education and the workplace beyond high school. Many civil rights organizations - the NAACP, the National Urban League, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Council of La Raza, for example - are right to be concerned about how the absence of uniform standards and a rigorous assessment regimen could affect the most vulnerable populations, including those they serve. "We cannot fix what we cannot measure. And abolishing the tests or sabotaging the validity of their results only makes it harder to identify and fix the deep-seated problems in our schools," those and other groups said in a recent statement. Various people have offered counterarguments. Scholars such as Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles, have thrown unrelated elements into the debate. The Post paraphrased Orfield this year: "Tests don't address the social problems that poor children bring to school or the fact that many start kindergarten already lagging behind more affluent children."

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States Standardized Testing is Good Issitt 15 Standardized Testing: An Overview. By: Issitt, Micah L., McMahon, Maureen, Points of View: Standardized Testing, 2015, Points of View Reference Center, 11/20/15 http://web.b.ebscohost.com... A standardized test is one that is given to evaluate the performance of students relative to all other students with the same characteristics, for example, all fourth-grade students or all students taking AP English in high school. In the United States, standardized testing is one of the primary methods used to measure the performance of educational institutions (and often teachers) and to make decisions about the distribution of funding. Standardized tests have been used in American schools since the 1930s to help identify students with special needs Since that time, a series of legislative measures, including the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), has placed increasing importance on the results of standardized tests. In response to those measures, public schools currently administer standardized tests as a prerequisite for receiving federal funding. Proponents argue that standardized testing is the most efficient method of assessing the performance of students and institutions and of maintaining the quality of education. Some critics argue that standardized tests are culturally and socially biased and that educators do not understand the variables that contribute to test scores. In addition, it has been suggested that standardized testing is an ineffective use of federal funding. Though many agree that the testing system is flawed, some believe that the current model can be reformed, while others believe that it is impossible to create a test to accurately measure aptitude across a diverse student population Standardized Test: A type of test given and graded in a uniform manner in an effort to create a universal standard against which the performance of individual students may be measured. Standardized Testing Today NCLB has been criticized by educational organizations who believe that the program represents a misallocation of federal funding. Critics argue that federal funding could be better used to improve pay rates and benefits for teachers, especially since tenure and reappointment are often based on test scores. In addition, some have criticized NCLB for making standardized testing a legal requirement without engaging in a suitable public debate. Under the Obama Administration, NCLB waivers were issued to districts that felt the program was not working for their schools. These waivers exempt school districts from some or all of the federal requirements under NCLB, including standardized testing. Proponents of testing argue that the government has a responsibility to ensure that educational funding is given to schools with the greatest need, and that the government must rely on some testing procedure to ensure that federal funding is being effectively used. In addition, some proponents argue that without standardized testing educators would be unable to identify students with special needs. Several independent research studies have indicated that the process of studying for tests helps students to develop long-term recall, even concerning material that is not included in the actual test. However, recent studies indicate that short-answer and essay tests are more effective than the current, largely multiple-choice testing models in helping students to recall information. In addition, some critics believe that standardized testing teaches students to learn in a way conducive to multiple-choice exams (that there is always one right answer) while encouraging teachers to "teach to the test" rather than supporting students' critical-thinking skills. High-stakes federal achievement requirements have also led to several large-scale cheating scandals, including a 2011 revelation that hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers altered standardized tests in order to falsely report student performance improvements. Finally, while standardized tests offer information about a population, they do not provide data that addresses the achievement of specific individuals (Cangliosi, 1990, p. 26).

Standardized Testing is beneficial for students K-12 in America First, the rules have stated that you back up your claims with adequate evidence. You have not provided any evidence, so I ask that you provide evidence from now on. Your point one is saying that standardized testing takes away from class time. Standardized testing teaches things in the test, so you are saying that standardized tests teach too much about the tests and too little about the other subjects. This is another way of saying "teaching to the test." According to Marcus Hirn, ""Teaching to the test" can be a good thing because it focuses on essential content and skills, eliminates time-wasting activities that don't produce learning gains, and motivates students to excel. [18] The US Department of Education stated in Nov. 2004 that "if teachers cover subject matter required by the standards and teach it well, then students will master the material on which they will be tested--and probably much more." [19]" This is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. Your second point is saying that standardized testing is stressful. However, according to Jay Rakow, founder of ProCon.org, Testing is not too stressful for students. The US Department of Education stated: "Although testing may be stressful for some students, testing is a normal and expected way of assessing what students have learned." [19] A Nov. 2001 University of Arkansas study found that "the vast majority of students do not exhibit stress and have positive attitudes towards standardized testing programs." Standardized testing is NOT stressful, and the little stress it exhibits is normal and expected in life. Your third point is standardized testing does not affect student's grades. It actually provides the state with how students are DOING WELL. This is effective. Your solution, using students' overall grades, is ineffective. Worksheets and projects are good ways to test students about little categories here and there, but a standardized test is basically a big worksheet covering EVERYTHING. Now, onto my case. Contention 1: Standardized Testing Holds Educators Accountable (Hughes 2015) Their objectivity and ability to measure student learning, standardized tests are useful tools for holding teachers, schools, and districts accountable for success or failure. The tests help education officials pinpoint where something isn't working in a school or district. Contention 2: The alternative to Standardized Testing is Tenure, a proven failure. (Winters 2012) Their potential contribution to improving teacher quality--the single most important school based factor for fostering student learning--far outweighs the upfront cost. The alternatives to standardized testing have proved to fail, therefore standardized testing is the only possible program left. Contention 3: Standardized testing allows us to determine the most effective teaching strategies, and to make them contextually specific. Geir (2007) Several studies have examined the impacts of inquiry science interventions on measured achievement as they scale up to enactment across multiple schools involving thousands of students. In an experiment in 2006, data suggests a cumulative effect of the intervention as students participate over several years. The data describes positive achievement effects from a standards-based curriculum unit enacted in 10 urban middle schools. Contention 4: All effective educators determine instructional approach by adjusting to data revealed by assessment. More data is not bad, provided it's more accurate than no data at all. Aycock (2014) How would we know what kids know without assessments? That"s the purpose of testing kids " to figure out what they know and are able to do. Assessments also give us data to inform instruction. If I teach something, but my class still hasn"t mastered it, then as a teacher I need to examine how I taught it the first time in order to teach it better next time. Likewise, if my class already knows something, I don"t need to teach it to them; we can move on to other things. Maybe most of my class have mastered a skill, but a handful need more time. Either way, I need data to inform my teaching " and that data comes from assessments. In sum, testing lets us know what kids know and can do, which helps us teach them better. Contention 5: Standardized Testing evaluates and improves student performance. Hughes (2015) Standardized testing is an indicator of skill. They are excellent objective indicators of student performance. The tests are designed to measure how well students learned the skills important tot meet state standards. Contention 6: Standardized Testing reveals and corrects flaws in students Flanagan (2009) Standardized testing yield quantifiable info results that can be used in screening programs, identifying students in need of further assessment. Standardized test results provide info regarding an examiner's areas of strength and weakness. Standardized tests can be used to assess students' progress over time results from a test administered in a standardized fashion can be empirically verified. This allows for results to be interpreted and ideas about an individual's skills generalized. That is why you should vote Aff.

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States The purpose of education has evolved over time. However, no where in the discussion does standardized testing seem to promote the goals of education. "The one continuing purpose of education, since ancient times, has been to bring people to as full a realization as possible of what it is to be a human being. Other statements of educational purpose have also been widely accepted: to develop the intellect, to serve social needs, to contribute to the economy, to create an effective work force, to prepare students for a job or career, to promote a particular social or political system. These purposes offered are undesirably limited in scope, and in some instances they conflict with the broad purpose I have indicated; they imply a distorted human existence. The broader humanistic purpose includes all of them, and goes beyond them, for it seeks to encompass all the dimensions of human experience. "Arthur W. Foshay, The Curriculum Matrix: Transcendence and Mathematics," Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 1991 "[The purpose of education] has changed from that of producing a literate society to that of producing a learning society." "Margaret Ammons, Associate Secretary of ASCD, Purpose and Program: How Does Commitment Today Differ from That in Other Periods, Educational Leadership, October 1964 "The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason but no morals. We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character"that is the goal of true education." "Martin Luther King Jr., speech at Morehouse College, 1948 (http://www.ascd.org...) It seems that the only ad coming off the pro is a uniform system of testing. In no way can we establish any sort of syllogism that connotes that uniformity leads to and increase in critical and moral thinking. For that reason we must reject the advocacy for tests and the notion that standardized testing is beneficial in the United States. On record, Standardized tests promote racial bias and promote conformity rather than ingenuity. Conformity stifles the ability for society to learn what it means to be a collective human race. Standardized tests undermine the purpose of our educational system and must be rejected.

Education: Testing Standardized testing, if anything, has not improved student achievement. In 2002, the US slipped from the 18th spot in the world for math scores, to the 31st slot in 2009. This drop was due to standardized tests and the stress they put on the students (1). The failing attempt to improve the test scores have gotten worse as the tests get harder, which also only test a small portion of the curriculum in schools. Math and reading courses have been told to teach different information in order to cover the tests questions, resulting in a lack of regular curricular (2). (1) http://standardizedtests.procon.org... (2) http://www.education.com...

Standardized Tests Standardized tests are not an effective method to determine a student's academic success. Standardized tests simplify the learning process to multiple choice answers and discourage students to think outside of the box. Students, especially those of a young age deal with a great amount of stress from test taking because they become nervous and overwhelmed with not only the testing process but the studying beforehand. Instead of enjoying school they are losing sight of the most important part of education: learning. Students are indeed learning which answers are "correct" or "incorrect" by multiple choice. Yet, isn't it most important that students are learning to understand why these answers are correct or incorrect? Don't we want our children to question and understand the information they are being taught as well as the world around them? Is that not the purpose of education in the first place? Consider the troubles these students are encountering when dealing with standardized tests and how this affects the learning process.

Standardized Tests Abolished means completely eliminate. Standardized testing serves a purpose. For example, it can provide data for educators and students on strengths and weaknesses. Data can be used to make improvements to education standards and set goals. As for high school graduation, a standardize test will make sure that high school graduates will be ready for the work world and/or college.

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States Though standardized test may help Identify racial inequity, it can by no means combat inequity: "Dating back to the development of IQ tests at the turn of the century, standardized tests have been used to sort and rank children, most reprehensibly along racial and class lines, and to rationalize giving more privileges to the already privileged. Indeed the first standardized tests were developed by eugenicists anxious for "scientific" data to prove their theories of biological determinism." (http://www.rethinkingschools.org...) Furthermore as stated previously, policy makers place to much emphasis on the test and not on the real world: "Proponents of standardized tests often wrap themselves in the language of high standards. But that's not the issue. No one advocates low standards. The issue is what we mean by higher standards, and how we can reach those standards.By and large, calls for more standardized tests come from politicians eager to prove they are serious about school reform and creating a "high skills," internationally competitive workforce. But they offer little if any evidence that links increased testing to improved teaching and learning. Similarly, test-pushers pay scant attention to key issues such as smaller classes, improved teacher education, more time for teacher planning and collaboration, and ensuring that all schools receive adequate and equitable resources needed to boost achievement. Rather than grappling with these issues, too many politicians have seized on a simplistic formula for reform: more standardized tests, especially "high stakes" tests. Nationwide, states and school districts are forcing a growing number of children to take "high stakes" standardized tests and, on the basis of test scores, children may be retained, denied access to a preferred high school, or, in some cases, even refused a high school diploma. That's not public accountability, it's discrimination. Dating back to the development of IQ tests at the turn of the century, standardized tests have been used to sort and rank children, most reprehensibly along racial and class lines, and to rationalize giving more privileges to the already privileged. Indeed the first standardized tests were developed by eugenicists anxious for "scientific" data to prove their theories of biological determinism. To acknowledge the sinister origins of standardized tests is not, however, to dismiss parent and community concerns about school accountability. We understand and agree with these concerns. Too many schools fail too many children, especially low-income students, students of color, and students who do not speak English as a first language. The broader community has the right and the responsibility to oversee how well schools perform. Good assessments can be one valid method of insuring accountability." (http://www.rethinkingschools.org...) The test itself has come to bind our educational system, not by wishing to bring a better tomorrow, but rather to bring a process to categorize you by tomorrow. If our education stays along this path, then the future of our world will be as stoic and lifeless as these test are. It is for that reason that we must reform our testing system or annihilate it all together.

Standardized Tests I disagree. The entire system of standardize education needs to be abolished.

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.

Education: Testing Standardized testing has been used for many years, so why should the US change the system now if it has obviously been running well this entire time? "Standardized tests have been a part of American education since the mid-1800s. Their use skyrocketed after 2002's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) mandated annual testing in all 50 states" (2). It is an extremely useful tool when measuring students, teachers, and schools overall. It is ignorant to think that standardized testing is unfair just because one student may have less intelligence than other. In fact, that just proves both the students focus skills during school and their teachers ability to teach. Examples of a pro-testing education leader is Michelle Rhee, the public schools chancellor in Washington, D.C., who said, ""In order to have the privilege of teaching kids you have to be able to show that you can significantly move their academic achievement levels, she says. "And if you can't show that, then you need to find another profession." Rhee launched a controversial evaluation system in Washington where test score growth counts as 50 percent of a teacher's annual performance score" (1). In addition to Rhee"s statement, standardized testing has other positive outcomes: "Standardized tests are not narrowing the curriculum, rather they are focusing it on important basic skills all students need to master. According to a study in the Oct. 28, 2005, issue of the peer-reviewed 'Education Policy Analysis Archives', teachers in four Minnesota school districts said standardized testing had a positive impact, improving the quality of the curriculum while raising student achievement" (2). In conclusion, not only is standardized testing proven to be fair, but it is also proven to be beneficial to everyone involved.

Standardized testing is hurting our school population and community I do agree that in large quantities, stress can indeed seem overwhelming to children who do not necessarily have the coping mechanism and mental maturity to deal with such stress. It is important to note that however, children are not completely independent like adults and have others to turn to in event of too much stress such as teachers, peers, parents, or even the school counsellor. Children with disabilities are often given greater berth in standardised tests and they are often provided with extra time, extra resources, to help them cope with their disadvantages. Stress from standardised testing helps to push children to be the best they can be, creating an air of competitiveness in education which will ultimately provide incentive to children to excel academically. It is also vital to be aware that standardised testing does not always place an inherent focus on test scores. Some standardised tests are not always weighted or graded, and not all systems place emphasis on test scores purely. Holistic education is key to providing children with a healthy, well-rounded and quality education. I also understand that standardised testing only shows the progress of students at a certain point in time, which is why it is important in the application of standardised testing that students are testing at regular periods of time throughout their education career. For example, quarterly, bi-annually, termly, etc. This will help to reflect growth of students in terms of academic competence. Contrary to belief, such standardised testing can be tailored to show the maturity of students, mental, emotional development by incorporating questions require a more development or mature view point such as questions for opinion, debate, or discussion, which will help to depict the emotional growth of a student. I do agree also that governments should increase funding for standardised testing as this will prove to be ultimately beneficial in setting up new education policies, to drive the education sector to a whole new level. In summary, I believe standardised testing is an immensely invaluable tool and that it should be implemented regularly at regular interval time periods and throughout the education levels, to provide optimal results, and I think this will prove to be a catalyst in the growth of education.

Standardized Tests My opponent is worried that students will only do well on standardized tests and it won't improve anything. The problems with tests is that their different. Tests are different between each school and each teacher often. This allows for some student not to have learned things while others have. Which creates an unbalanced classroom where some students are struggling to learn material and others are bored because they had already learned it. In fact a study has shown that 79% of students think that standard tests are fair. My opponent is also worried that it restricts creativity of thinking. A test is to test your knowledge. Grades 1-12 are there to teach you the basics of a wide range of knowledge. Tests are there to see if you get what you are learning. Standard tests already have questions that promote creative thinking. Teaching for the test is a good thing. It eliminates time wasting activities. It focuses on the content and that way the students will all learn the same thing and no student will be left behind. Standardized tests do not narrow the curriculum. It focuses the curriculum. The multiple choice is actually helpful in improving the education system because it produces accurate information. Also the markings for standardized tests are fair. Teacher markings are not fair because the teacher may not like a child and mark their test harder than others. If you don't believe me China is living proof that standard tests work. They have a set of standard tests and they are leading the world when it comes to academics.

Education: Testing Test scores is a superior way to measure teachers" effort and ability to do their job (1). The higher the test courses from students, the better the teacher is. Furthermore, standardized tests are a just measure of student achievement, along with ensuring teachers and schools are accountable to taxpayers (2). Standardized testing is approved by students and parents for being such an efficient system. (1) http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org... (2) http://standardizedtests.procon.org...

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to k-12 education in the United States. Standardized Testing Undermines Teaching http://www.npr.org... Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch was once an early advocate of No Child Left Behind, school vouchers and charter schools. In 2005, she wrote, "We should thank President George W. Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act. ... All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents' generation." But four years later, Ravitch changed her mind. "I came to the conclusion ... that No Child Left Behind has turned into a timetable for the destruction of American public education," she tellsFresh Air's Terry Gross. "I had never imagined that the test would someday be turned into a blunt instrument to close schools " or to say whether teachers are good teachers or not " because I always knew children's test scores are far more complicated than the way they're being received today." No Child Left Behind required schools to administer yearly state standardized tests. Student progress on those tests was measured to see if the schools met their Adequate Yearly Progress goals. or AYP. Schools missing those goals for several years in a row could be restructured, replaced or shut down. "The whole purpose of federal law and state law should be to help schools improve, not to come in and close them down and say, 'We're going to start with a clean slate,' because there's no guarantee that the clean slate's going to be better than the old slate," says Ravitch. "Most of the schools that will be closed are in poor or minority communities where large numbers of children are very poor and large numbers of children don't speak English. They have high needs. They come from all kinds of difficult circumstances and they need help " they don't need their school closed." "What has happened ... is that [charter schools have] become an enormous entrepreneurial activity and the private sector has moved in," she says. "So there are now charter chains where the heads are paying themselves $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 a year. They compete with regular public schools. They do not see themselves as collaborators with public schools but business competitors and in some cases, they actually want to take away the public school space and take away the public school business." Ravitch says that charter schools undercut the opportunities for public schools, making public school students feel like "second-class citizens." "Regular public school parents are angry because they no longer have an art room, they no longer have a computer room " whatever space they had for extra activities gets given to the charters and then they have better facilities. They have a lot of philanthropic money behind them " Wall Street hedge fund managers have made this their favorite cause. So at least in [New York City] they are better-funded ... so they have better everything." But change in the public schools is possible, says Ravitch, if parents work together. "In the neighborhood where I live in Brooklyn, there was a school that was considered a bad public school and it enrolled many children from a local public housing project," she says. "But parents in the neighborhood who were middle-class parents and were educated people banded together and decided, 'Well, if we all send our child to the local public school, it will get better.' And it did get better and it's now one of the best schools in the city. So yes, you can change the neighborhood school. ... But school officials have a particular responsibility to make sure there's a good school in every neighborhood. And handing the schools in low-income neighborhoods over to entrepreneurs does not, in itself, improve them. It's simply a way of avoiding the public responsibility to provide good education."

Standardized testing is hurting our school population and community I believe that standardised testing is beneficial to students. Indeed, there will be an added amount of pressure and stress, but I believe that this helps them propel them forward toward striving for success. Stress is an important catalyst in one's motivation to work and if wisely wielded, can be a powerful tool in the advancement of education hence it is not necessarily a bad thing. Standardised testing is a means for a government to know where it stand in terms of further educational and holistic development and is also highly useful in education analysis. Without standardised testing, it will not be known if the students of a certain level are performing up to par, and without the proper Intel to make due changes and altercations to the education system, this can be dangerous for a country to be grooming substandard future population which would inevitably hinder society and have drastic implications on the work force. For example, in Singapore, there are standardised tests that occur twice each year on the average in primary, secondary schools and even junior college. These tests give the schools and government information on the amount of resources that should be diverted toward education sector, whether the Budget should increase or decrease, and also gives insight on the effectiveness ok current curriculum and providing incentive for change or improvement. Standardised testing has proved to be extremely beneficial to Singapore, and it is one of the most educationally advanced and successful countries in the education sector that many other countries tend to go on a pilgrimage for.

Standardized Tests are skewed in favour of the wealthy Standardized tests are inherently skewed in favour of high-income students. Tutoring is and industry unto itself and the resulting rise in scores among high income students skews the scale against students whose families cannot afford it. By contrast, even if the money is available, the impact that tutoring can have on a student’s academic performance is limited. A tutor cannot write papers or take tests for them, and nor can they answer questions in class, or participate in sports or other extracurricular activities. As a consequence, eliminating easily tutored standardized tests helps even the playing field between richer and poorer students.

On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States My opponent has plagiarized from . http://webcache.googleusercontent.com... If one doesn't site the link, it is still considered PLAGIARISM. Now onto through refutations of my opponents points:The counter repudiations will be in round 3. I would now like to begin: Contention #1- Standardized Testing results in incomplete educationPart A- Standardized testing alters school curriculum to the detriment of a well-rounded education. The talked a lot about how teachers only prepare students for the tests therefore stopping a well rounded education. As I understood this point, teachers don't teach students everything, they prepare students for the test. However, on the contrary, standardized tests ensure a well rounded, balanced education. What is on the test is what the student needs to know which once again leads to a well rounded education. . http://www.educationreport.org... Consider a test of reading comprehension. Teachers may prepare their students by working on sample problems. Teachers may spend time instructing students on how to identify a passage’s main idea. They may also show them how to use context clues to figure out unknown words. Further, teachers may show students how to identify supporting evidence or conclusion sentences. These critical reading skills are precisely what teachers should be teaching anyway; in this light, teaching to the test may not be such a bad thing after all. Another criticism of teaching to the test is that other untested subjects do not receive as much attention. Rather than spending extra time at recess or in music or art, students practice for reading, math, science or social studies tests. Again, is this a bad thing? Students need a balanced curriculum, but the best thing we can do is to ensure that they are developing the cognitive abilities and skills that will prepare them for success in the workforce or higher education. Part B- Standardized testing mostly hurt minorities and the poor. However, I once again dont see the link. Studying is not about your skin color or your financial class. It is about hard work and dedication. If the poor work really hard to get a 300 on their NJAsk, theu can do it. If they dont, they will blatantly fail. The same goes for anyone in the upper class. If someone from the upper class works hard, they will get a scholarship and success. If they decide to waste their life while being a student, they will also receive the school to prison pipeline. Its not about heritage, its about dedication. Now onto a quick note about the disabled and language learners. Such people are given the easier gradient of the test or if the gradient stays the same, the expectation falls giving them the same chance for success. Contention #2- Because of the limitations of standardized testing, it makes a poor measurement of actual learning. Part A- One size does not fit all. My opponent went on about how the educators try to fit for the test. However, my opponents assertion and his evidence are completely irrelevant. And yet, I will attempt a thorough refuation. The one fit all approach and teachers trying to fit the tests is beneficial. What is on the test is what teachers should teach. For instance, on the third grade NJASk or PARK Test, students would be asked to measure angles and perhaps to multiply 5 digit numbers. Without the test, would the teacher be teaching the student 2+2? No. The hypotenuse? No. Teachers would be going over 5 digit number multiplication and measuring angles. About the one size fits all approach. .. Students who are on the same grade level are expected to know the same thing and the one size fits all in this case is a strong benefit of the education system. Part B- Tests do not cover material that is actually taught. However, tests cover what is taught. The teachers spend a lot of time preparing students to take the test. Educators give out practice tests to give students a feel about what the tests are about. If afterall what is on a standardized test is not knows by the student, then there is probably a problem. The teacher probably does not teach what is needed. Standardized tests have material that the student NEEDS to know. If they dont know it, school curriculum needs to be changed. Contention #3- Standardized testing hurts teachers. Part A- Teachers loose control of the curriculum. However, as I have mentioned numerous times, the teachers decide what they teach students and so does the education system. Of course, there are certain basics. These basics are tested just to make sure that the teachers are doing what they need. Standardized tests breifly go over what was studied throughout the year. If a teacher taught the required curriculum, whats the worry? None. Teachers dont loose any control over curriculum. WHAT THE TEACHERS TEACH IS ON THE TEST. Standardized tests are based on what teachers are expected to teach by the program. Tests dont provide the curriculum. The tests rely on the teachers and education program. In simple language, what the teacher SHOULD teach is in the test. If the teacher is teaching grade appropriate information, there will be no detriment to teachers. What the pro stated was that standardized testing directs the curriculum. However, the standardized testing is what teachers need to teach nevertheless. Part B- Teachers loose control of content and scope. They talked about how activities such as art will be squeezed out of the program. However, that is absolutely untrue. Activities such as art are required for the student program. The whole day is not spent on language arts and math. There is a schedule for every singl homeroom.

On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States In his round, I will be pointing out some information and then stating my own contentions. Since my opponent did not provide any definitions, I will now do so. Standardized testing- A type of test that has the same questions for every student, depending on age and grade level. It is scored in a manner which allows the results of students to be compared. Even though the first round is about stating points, I feel that it is crucial for me to point out PLAGIARISM. My opponent has given a quote by Lisa Adams. That quote was in Part A of Contention 1. And I would like to point out that my opponent did not site a source. You can compare his quote with the one www. boledebate. com/uploads/2/. .. /3-pf-standardized-testing-starter. docx. There is no difference. But now, to return to the discussion. Contention #1- Taking the tests can make something be remembered by the child. . http://www.theatlantic.com..., "Henry L. Roediger III, a cognitive psychologist at Washington University, studies how the brain stores, and later retrieves, memories. He compared the test results of students who used common study methods—such as re-reading material, highlighting, reviewing and writing notes, outlining material and attending study groups—with the results from students who were repeatedly tested on the same material. When he compared the results, Roediger found, “Taking a test on material can have a greater positive effect on future retention of that material than spending an equivalent amount of time restudying the material. ” Remarkably, this remains true “even when performance on the test is far from perfect and no feedback is given on missed information. ”" If the only way to make a child retain information is taking a standardized test, then why not? Schools are created to help children learn. And if the way to achieve a strong education system is by testing knowledge and encouraging hard work, the tests must stay. psychologists such as the one I have brought up above admit that while students may not enjoy standardized testing in particular, they at the end reach their goal- to be able to remember information they learn in school and to be able to apply it. Contention #2- Allow the comparison of scores of kids from different districts. . http://webcache.googleusercontent.com... " Public school students in the state of Texas are all required to take the same state standardized tests. This means that a student in Amarillo can be compared to a student in Dallas. Being able to accurately compare data is invaluable and is a major reason that the Common Core State Standards have been adopted. These will allow for a more accurate comparison between states. "With standardized testing, people can compare the intellectual differences between one another. In order, to know what level we are at, people must assess us based on a comparison to other people our age. Knowing a straight percent is not enough to know whether or not you are on the correct learning track or whether you are perhaps suffering in your learniang skills. Someone may take a test in New York and receive at 85. However, most of the other New Yorkers will receive 100. If you do not know how others are doing at education, you will not know how well you are doing on a larger scale. Contention #3- Proffesionals and parents support stndardized testing. . https://prezi.com... "Multiple-choice tests, in particular, are graded by machine and therefore are not subject to human subjectivity or bias A 2005 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll found that 60% of public school parents say the emphasis on testing in their local schools is either "about right" or that there is "not enough" testing. " . http://standardizedtests.procon.org... "In a 2009 Scholastic/Gates Foundation survey, 81% of US public school teachers said state-required standardized tests were at least "somewhat important” as a measure of students’ academic achievement, and 27% said they were "very important " or "absolutely essential. " 73% of teachers surveyed in a Mar. 2002 Public Agenda study said they "have not neglected regular teaching duties for test preparation. "" Many proffesionals admit that standardized tests are beneficial to child learning. Statistics show it! Parents understand it! Teachers see benefits! The education system is currently reaching its climax because of standardized testing. With this huge support of proffesionals, there will be no reason to stop testing. Contention #4- Standardized testing is a huge, indisposable industry. . http://www.pbs.org... "The National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy at Boston College compiled data from The Bowker Annual, a compendium of the dollar-volume in test sales each year, and reported that while test sales in 1955 were $7 million (adjusted to 1998 dollars), that figure was $263 million in 1997, an increase of more than 3,000 percent. Today, press reports put the value of the testing market anywhere from $400 million to $700 million. " Money, another benefit of standardized testing. The test industry earns a lot of money on a yearly basis. This money can be used to make adjustments of out education systems. If we modify and perfect our system of learning, it will be possible to make sure that testing is even more efficient than it is currently. Investments into the future is a solution which will fit everyone. Contention #5- Students consider standardized testing fair and square. . https://prezi.com... "Public Agenda survey of 1,342 public school students in grades 6-12 found that 71% of students think the number of tests they have to take is "about right" and 79% believe test questions are fair. The 2002 edition of the survey found that "virtually all students say they take the tests seriously and more than half (56 percent) say they take them very seriously. "" Before moving on to my final arguments, I would like to clarify one thing. Students dont enjoy these tests. They consider them fair. In fact, the student body should not like testing. They should feel that it is FAIR. However, they should like learning, The enjoying of learning at the feeling that tests are fair are corrolated. Contention #6- Standardized tests raise students confidence. . http://www.merriam-webster.com... "Confidence: : a feeling or belief that you can do something well or succeed at something : a feeling or belief that someone or something is good or has the ability to succeed at something : the feeling of being certain that something will happen or that something is true" On the news, you probably see stories about kids commiting suicide because of standardized testing. Those cases however, are extremely rare. What is common, is self esteem causing confidence. People tend to over exaggerate the small examples of bad things happening but tend to ignore positivity. Honestly, confidence is caused by being sure of yourself. That is what testing does. If students worked hard, they will know that they are smart. That is what happens in most of the cases. In addition, stress is caused by many other factors. So should we ban those too? Judges, I am sure that you can see why standardized testing has a positive influence on the education system. Thank you.

Standardized Tests Yes, if you create formal standards for the education system, the tests are probably necessary. I support the abolishment of all formal standards. They are designed to ensure that all students meet a certain criteria before they move on(see: No Child Left Behind). However, this also prevents superior students from moving forward with their education because they are stuck waiting for stupid kids. Standards are a terrible system for education.

On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States By accepting this match, you agree to follow the process below: Round 1: Present Debate Cases Round 2: Recognize and attach opponent's arguments Round 3: Defend your case Round 4: Voters(Why you win) My partner and I negate today"s resolution and stand resolved, On balance, standardized testing is NOT beneficial to K-12 education in the United States. Obs 1: Even though the SAT and ACT are considered "Standardized Tests", not all students take them, so the Con will ignore any arguments made about them. Obs 2: If the Con can prove that there are more harms than benefits, it should be enough for the Con to win. Contention 1: Standardized Testing results in incomplete education A: Standardized testing alters school curriculum to the detriment of a well-rounded education Lisa Adams, Research Associate, Joseph Pedulla, Professor at Boston College, George Madaus, Professor at Boston College, 2003, Theory into practice, 42.1, p. 18-29 Quote "Much of the research on state testing programs addresses their effects on what is taught. A common finding is that teachers report giving greater attention to tested content areas. For example, of the Virginia survey by Myran & Workman(1999), more than 80% indicated that the state Standards of Learning (SOL) test had impacted their instruction, particularly with regard to the content focus of daily lessons. " B: Low-income and minority students are hurt the most by the emphasis on standardized test scores. "How Standardized Testing Damages Education (Updated July 2012). " FairTest. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, 28 Aug. 2007. Web. 03 Nov. 2015. <. http://fairtest.org...;. Quote"Students from low-income and minority-group backgrounds, English language learners, and students with disabilities, are more likely to be denied diplomas, retained in grade, placed in a lower track, or unnecessarily put in education programs. This ensures they will fall further and further behind their peers. Many drop out, some ending up in the "school-to-prison pipeline. " On the other hand, children from white, middle and upper income backgrounds are more likely to be placed in "gifted and talented" or college preparatory programs where they are challenged to read, explore, investigate, think and progress rapidly. "-Champ Briefs Pg. 147 MPK: Standardized testing can harm the well-rounded education curriculum teachers have been teaching. Standardized testing also hurts low-income and minority-group backgrounds and discriminates against them, creating even greater achievement gaps. Contention 2: Because of the limitations of standardized testing, it makes a poor measurement of actual learning. A: One size fits all just doesn"t work W. James Popham, Emeritus Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality. March 1999 | Volume 56 | Number 6 Using Standards and Assessments Pages 8-15. . http://www.ascd.org...'t-Measure-Educational-Quality.aspx Quote"At a very general level, the goals that educators pursue in different settings are reasonably similar. For instance, you can be sure that all schools will give attention to language arts, mathematics, and so on. But that's at a general level. At the level where it really makes a difference to instruction, in the classroom, there are significant differences in the educational objectives being sought. And that presents a problem to those who must sell standardized achievement tests. " B. Tests do not cover what is actually taught. James Popham continues. Quote"To illustrate the seriousness of the mismatch that can occur between what's taught locally and what's tested through standardized achievement tests, educators ought to know about an important study at Michigan State University reported in 1983 by Freeman. They concluded that between 50 and 80 percent of what was measured on the tests was not suitably addressed in the textbooks. The proportion of topics presented on a standardized test that received more than cursory treatment in each textbook was never higher than 50 percent. " MPK: Standardized testing does not cover much of what is taught by teachers, and are too limited. Therefore, such tests cannot accurately measure actual learning by students Contention 3: Standardized testing hurts teachers A:Teachers lose control of the curriculum. Segall, Avner. [Professor at Michigan State University]. "Teachers" Perceptions of the Impact of State-Mandated Standardized Testing: The Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) as a Case Study of Consequences. " Theory & Research in Social Education. 2003. Web. Accessed November 4, 2015. Quote "Exploring the relationship between teachers and standardized testing, and using the Michigan Evaluation Assessment Program (MEAP) and the discourses surrounding it as a case study of consequences, this study both combines findings from previous studies on teachers and testing and adds to them. Like McNeil"s (2000) study, it points out how standardized testing is not simply an evaluator of a curriculum but its creator. " B: Teachers lose control of both content and scope "How Standardized Tests Shape--and Limit--Student Learning. " National Council of Teachers of English. James R. Squire Office of Policy Research. 2014. Web. Accessed 8 November 2015. . http://www.ncte.org...- nov2014/CC0242PolicyStandardized. pdf Quote"Standardized tests narrow the entire curriculum in many schools, often squeezing out subjects such as music, art, foreign languages, and, especially in elementary grades, social studies, because they are not included in tests. For ELA teachers, these tests also lead to subject-specific narrowing. ELA teachers are required to focus their instruction on the literacy skills measured on standardized tests. Since reading is more prominent than writing in most tests, teachers spend more time on reading rather than writing, usually focusing on comprehension, not higher-order critical reading skills. " MPK: Standardized testing forces teachers to teach to a test instead of being allowed to facilitate learning in their preferred ways. This leads to teachers feeling inadequate and struggling to teach a curriculum they didn"t create. Conclusion: As my partner and I have proven, standardized testing is NOT beneficial to K-12 education. Standardized testing hurts minorities and low income students, and it does not cover what is taught, which causes teaching to the test.

Standardized testing sets useful baseline achievement standards. It is important that a nation has a general frame of reference on where students should, on average, be at various stages in their educational development. Standardized testing helps do this by setting a baseline level of achievement at each grade. While some students may perform above or below this standard, the important thing is judging the general educational trends across American society, so that we can help guide our national educational system onto a globally competitive path.

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States On the mark: is standardized testing good for education? Hoffman 99, Today's Parents Something has changed. For years we were content to sail along, secure in the belief that Canada had one of the world's best education systems. We looked around at our literate, economically successful democracy and thought, "We must be doing a good job of educating." But, at some point, that belief began to crumble. Maybe it was a reaction to more holistic education approaches introduced in the 1960s, and a growing perception that our schools turn out graduates who lack basic skills. Maybe it's because the most educated adult population in history has higher expectations of schools. Perhaps it's our shrinking global society. We know much more than we used to about what Japanese, German and American children learn in school. Do they learn times tables a grade earlier than our kids? Will that make them better software designers and widget-makers as adults?Whatever the reason, we increasingly look to Standardized tests to see if our schools measure up -- seven of ten Canadian provinces, as well as the Yukon Territory, now have some form of regular testing , usually beginning in grade three or four. Greg Gribbon of Bradford, Ontario welcomes this trend. He wants testing to confirm what his six- and eight-year-old daughters are learning and to tell him whether the school is doing its job. For Gribbon, report cards and classroom marks aren't enough. "I've heard too many stories from parents who were told that their child was doing fine, only to find out in grade three and grade four that he couldn't read."So, what's a good test? "It must have both validity and reliability," says David Ireland, a retired manager of research and evaluation for the former Carleton Board of Education in eastern Ontario. Validity means the test measures what you want it to measure -- for example, basic math skills. Reliability means that the same child would get the same result from one week to the next, no matter who was doing the marking.Get Congress out of standardized testing Tribune 11 Standardized testing is good for assessing the progress of a child's education and determining where to go next. That is, if the test is a diagnosis-type test. However, standardized testing -- the types done to comply with NCLB -- is seriously flawed. These tests aim to determine how a classroom, a school or a district stands in educating children. They are flawed partially because they encourage schools to teach to the test and partially because they fail to consider the contribution parents make or, more pointedly, fail to make. Teaching to the test only builds memorization skills, rather than understanding context, opinions and social aspects.Data gathered from the survey reveal important information about the impact of testing. Klein Zevenbergen Brown 06 Klein, School of Education Zevenbergen, Department of Psychology Brown,Student Personnel Administrator This paper explores how teachers manage standardized testing in schools. A survey was distributed among 20 elementary, middle, and high school teachers in a semi-rural community of Western New York. The data gathered from the survey responses reveal important information about the impact of testing on teaching. Standardized testing affects many of the teachers' focus on instruction. In many cases, teachers prepare their students year-round. Teachers provide test-related, preparative instruction, which governs most of their curricula. A few teachers admit that testing allows them to develop more focused teaching experiences for their students. Insights gleaned from this research study reveal the need to address the many challenges teachers encounter related to standardized testing.

National testing will ensure all students learn the same, essential skills and information Standardized tests ensures students learn the most important information. There is some information in the world that is essential to know so that, as adults, schoolchildren can excel in their jobs. Standardized tests help ensure that all students learn this important information. It is true that this information can be difficult, and perhaps even boring, including history, literacy (reading comprehension), and math. Yet, it is, nevertheless, essential, so testing for it and ensuring students know the information is extremely valuable. A recent study of American high school seniors found that just 13 per cent could answer basic questions of American history correctly; national testing ensures that the next generation will be encouraged to learn about such history, in a fair and balanced manner, up and down the country1. 1 Banchero, S. (2011, June 15). Students stumble again on the basics of history. Retrieved July 12, 2011, from The Wall Street Journal: improve this

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to k-12 education in the United States. One thing you mentioned in your first argument is that any teacher can tell you that information about a child, but you are also forgetting the fact that teachers are human beings. A teacher will like one kid but have distaste for the other because of a paper he wrote about a topic. What I am basically saying is that people are not perfect, and asking the teacher what they think could place the student behind because of what they accidently said about the student. We also must remember that parents help out a lot these days. The "Star" student of the class may just be the star student because his mother helped him with that writing piece, or that math worksheet. Occasional standardized testing weeds out whether kids are stars because they are getting help from their parents, or because they are actually good students.

Resolved on balance Resolved: on balance, standardized testing is beneficial to k-12 education in the United States.

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States Contention 1. Standardised testing is racist.Doctor Harold Berlak, an independent researcher and professor at Washington University finds Standardized testing perpetuates institutionalized racism and contributes to the achievement gap between whites and minorities. For instance, the deeply embedded stereotype that African Americans perform poorly on standardized tests hinders many African Americans’ testing ability. Also, research has shown that minorities statistically have lower standardized test scores than whites because of existing, hidden biases in the development and administration of standardized tests and interpretation of their scores. Therefore, the achievement gap will not begin to close until current standards and assessment tests are significantly reformed ... Even when parents’ income and wealth is comparable, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and immigrants for whom English is not a first language lag behind English speaking, native-born, white students. Nowile M. Rooks of Time Magazine in October 2012 finds Today, as an acknowledgment of the inherent racial and economic inequity of standardized achievement tests, hundreds of colleges have already stopped requiring the SAT for college admission decisions. However, the same cannot be said for k-12, where scores on achievement tests are in part used for everything from admitting students to prestigious public schools to placing students in gifted or remedial programs, allocating federal funding, and even evaluating teachers. Nowile continues The recently filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education pointing out that black and Latino students in New York score below whites and Asians on standardized tests so consistently that although they are almost 70% of the overall student body, they are only 11% of students enrolled at elite public schools. As a result, the complaint argues that New York City is in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because schools rely on a test that advantages one racial group over another. The system in which we are debating is inherently racist and biased against 1 people of color and 2 those that are non-english speaking. We can’t say that the system in which we are operating benefits education no matter what, unless we are trying to defend a racist system that attacks people for being themselves and not being what color of skin the test-makers want them to be. C2. Standardised testing is opening the door for eugenics. Joshua Cook in 2013 of the Freedom Outpost writes that standardised tests as of now are perhaps the scariest way to mine for data of the American future. He writes that having this data collected and mined, perhaps sold to companies for school profits when schools can barely balance their own budget due to systemic racism and redlining, is a way of measuring intelligence (and we think that our opponents will agree with us to this point). However, as John Loflin of the Education Community-Action Team in April 2013 writes , if history has taught us anything, having a massive database of the intelligence of the American future is beyond harmful or just ‘bad’ - it is outright amoral. US history has taught us that when the draft goes into place, the US government will first pick those that have low test scores or low intelligences to serve in the war so that they die - and an American ‘utopia’ is restored with only complete European descendents being alive and running the country. This is the very definition of eugenics - which is trying to keep those that are undesirable from reproducing (they can’t have children if they die in foreign combat). And if we look to the way that we looked onto Hitler’s actions of eugenics in Germany in world war two, we see that we can’t set up a system that allows for this to happen. Further, Loflin explains, there are people that are in charge of the US military drafting service that are in favor of eugenics and ‘weeding out undesirables’ from the mainstream - though they do not say it in this same language, the intentions are the same as what we are saying they think to be true. We cannot stand here and defend a system that is by its very core racist - so far racist as to have eugenics a full possibility due to the way that standardised testing is set up as of now. We can only see a negative ballot with all things considered, thank you.

Standardized tests poorly measure real student learning Standardized testing often tests only a very limited range of skills rather than the broad range of skills we would hope our educational system is teaching. Standardized testing focuses largely on memorization, speed of recall, and critical thinking. Yet, a full education entails much more, including creativity, emotional insight, composure and dignity, physical health and an understanding of nutrition, and many other basic human values. NCLB, therefore, does not measure the most important factors in a student's education and future success and happiness. It is, therefore, useless as a measure of a student and school's performance.

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to k-12 education in the United States. Why we don"t need standardized testing Resolved: On Balance standardized testing is beneficial to k-12 education in the Unites States. Standardized tests don"t provide any further information we don"t already know - Greg Jouriles 14 http://www.edweek.org... There are two main arguments against using standardized tests to guarantee that students reach at least a basic level of academic competency. The first is radical: These tests are not necessary. The second"less radical and more familiar"is that, even if standardized testing were an efficient benchmark of basic skills, the costs associated with it are too high. Standardized tests are unnecessary because they rarely show what we don't already know. Ask any teacher and they can tell you which students can read and write. That telling usually comes in the form of letter grades or evaluations that break down progress on skills. So trust the teacher. Publish grade distributions. Locally publish a compilation of evaluation reports. Release a state or national report reviewed and verified by expert evaluators with legislative oversight. People will say: "That's crazy! Schools will fudge results. Grade data means nothing because teachers apply different standards with different values. Let's give them all one reliable test. And won't this proposal create a whole new bureaucracy?" All true (except for the one test being reliable). Given high stakes and the accompanying pressure, people will game a system. And it is all too true that grades vary widely because of four factors: a teacher's conception of achievement, a teacher's sense of equity and rigor, a teacher's ability, and the composition of students. But people are already gaming standardized testing, sometimes criminally. And, at a basic level of competency, a grade or an evaluative report would give us as much information as we now get from standardized tests. We have the grade problem at my high school. In the same course or department, a B in one classroom might be an A, or even a C, in another. It's a problem for us, and, likely, a problem in most schools. "To sum up, we don"t learn much from standardized accountability, and we have lost a great deal by giving it so much prominence." But it has also been an opportunity. Recognizing our grading differences, we opted to create a common conception of achievement, our graduate profile, and department learning outcomes with rubrics. Our standards now align closely with the Common Core State Standards. Second, we created common performance tasks that measure these standards and formative assessments that scaffold to them. Third, we look together at student work. Fourth, we have begun to grade each other's students on these common tasks. We could publish the results of these performance tasks, and the public would have a good idea of what we're good at and what we're not. For example, our students effectively employ reading strategies to comprehend a text, but are often stymied by a lack of vocabulary or complex syntax. We've also learned most of our students can coherently develop a claim, citing the appropriate evidence to support it when choosing from a restricted universe of data. They aren't as good when the universe of data is broadened. They are mediocre at analysis, counter-arguments, rebuttals, and evaluation of sources, though they have recently gotten better at evaluating sources as we have improved our instruction and formative assessments. A small percentage of our students do not show even basic competency in reading and writing. That's better information than we've ever received from standardized testing. What's also started to happen is that teachers who use the same standards and rubrics, assign the same performance tasks, and grade each other's work are finding their letter grades starting to align. And, this approach has led to a lot of frank discussions. For example, why are grades different? Where we have looked, different conceptions of achievement and rigor seem most important. So we have to talk about it. The more we do, the more aligned we will become, and the more honest picture of achievement we can create. It has been fantastic professional development"done without external mandates. We have a long way to go, but we can understand the value of our efforts and see improvement in student work. I would not advocate publishing individual teachers' grades because it would cause the same problems as publishing individual teachers' standardized-test results, but grades by subject, grade level, and demographic categories could be fair game externally. Internally, those breakdowns should stimulate hard conversations and necessary professional development. Of course, this proposal would have to be negotiated and modified locally to avoid the punishment/reward cycle of other accountability measures that force people to conform and tempt them to cheat. The goal is to spur the collaboration and conversation necessary for improvement. Well, that's your district, some might say. It's got a unique collaborative culture and a better sense of achievement than most. You can't do that across the nation. Why not? With the common core, a definition of achievement exists. And teachers are more likely to respond to professional development and accountability more concretely connected to their daily work. They are more likely to improve. That leads to the second argument. Even if standardized testing were not only desirable to give the public a picture of basic competencies, but also an efficient way to do so, the costs have been too great. Many have previously made cogent arguments (unrealistic definitions of achievement, skewed instructional schemes, inequitable curricular offerings, inevitable corruption, perverted charter school missions, alienation, disempowerment, and embarrassment of educators, etc.) in this vein, but let's think about a supposed example of success on this front"a school with the high test scores. In general, such a school has a compliant or affluent population. Test scores are a point of pride. The school has a good reputation. But, when you go in and observe, the teaching and learning do not impress. Never once have I looked at the test scores of this kind of school and thought, "How could I be more like them?" That's because success represented just a score on a narrow test of a limited band of achievement (a test, by the way, with content that I was not even legally allowed to talk about), and I couldn't see how looking at that score could help me in my day-to-day teaching. Even worse, I don't think the teachers at such schools have learned much from their good scores. If anything, the scores have prevented them from becoming better. So, to sum up, we don't learn much from standardized testing, and we have lost a great deal by giving it so much prominence. The common core is at risk for failure, not because the standards are bad per se, but because with standardized accountability, as in so many partial reforms, we again won't get a real picture of achievement, people will be disappointed, and the standards and testing will run their course. Instead, why not just trust teachers and schools to report the progress of their students with the measures they have, and use internal and external local pressures to improve the measures and practices? It will avoid a plethora of social, emotional, and political costs. Any bureaucracy created can't be more of a drag on the government or economy than the legion of consultants and think tanks today feeding off the trough of education. This proposal is more in line with what we know about the success of sustainable local organizations and what we know about the inflated rise and inevitable fall of mass reform.

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to k-12 education in the U.S 1. Not All Students The Same Badertscher, Eric, and Heather Newton. "Counterpoint: National Education Standards Overlook Individuals And Local Communities." Points Of View: Standardized Testing (2015): 3. Points of View Reference Center. Web. 20 Nov. 2015. http://web.b.ebscohost.com... Standardized testing presents numerous problems in American education. First, it fails to take into account that not all children learn in same way. This is especially true in the primary grades, when children are still new to school in general. Even children with high intelligence may find themselves placed in remedial courses if they do not perform well on standardized tests. State and federal educational bureaucracies tend to use standardized testing as a way to increase their own control over the educational process. By establishing state or national standards, they reduce the role of the free market. Even private schools, for example, which accept school vouchers and are often developed by parents unhappy with local public school systems, find themselves subject to increased governmental oversight through forced conformity with federal standardized testingrequirements. Even state officials have discouraged home schooling on the grounds that this method doesn't provide sufficient standardized testing opportunities. In the bigger picture, the public needs to recognize that bureaucracies (whether local, state, or federal) cannot solve all educational problems. Parents must recognize that children are at school for only part of the day; learning, however, can take place all day long. Thus, parents can look for ways to teach children important concepts after school and during the summer when they are not at school. Parents can also encourage local school boards to use other forms of testingto gain a better assessment of each student's academic progress. Standardized tests have also been linked to an overemphasis on vocational education. For example, students learn business math, but are not taught the larger concepts of critical thinking in mathematics. Likewise, some English classes focus on business writing, rather than teaching students to write essays that develop analytical skills. Education should focus as much on pure intellectual growth and being a good citizen, as on earning a living and passing a test

Resolved on balance I accept. I expect that I am allowed to present definitions because of the absence of an outline to the argument. The BoP is on con. [1]Beneficial: receiving or entitling one to receive advantage, use, or benefit [2]Balance: a state of equilibrium or equipoise [3]Standardized tests: any form of test that requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection of questions from common bank of questions, in the same way, and that is scored in a "standard" or consistent manner, which makes it possible to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of students. Contention 1: Testing is provably beneficial to all students. Contention 2: Standardized tests are normal tests. Contention 3: Tests help teachers recognize where students need help with learning. C1: A test is a a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something[4]. By taking a test, a student is able to see how well they know a subject. These tests can help the student assess what they need to study. This is beneficial to the student in the case where they may not know what all they do not understand, which is where a standardized test can help them. C2: A standardized test is not just the tests that you take once a year that are sent in to assess your overall knowledge, they are also, by definition, the tests you take ever so often in all of your classes. A standardized test is just a fancy way of describing a test that everyone in a class takes, whether it be 'multiple choice' or 'true or false'. C3: By taking a test, not only does the student help themselves find out what they need to learn and study, it also allows the teacher to be aware of what their students are learning, and what they are having a hard time with. Whether the teacher decides to help out individuals or their class as a whole, this can be equally efficient in addressing these types of issues. Conclusion: I have upheld my value of the beneficialness of standardized tests, that standardized testing is beneficial to k-12 education in the United States, and I urge the affirmation of the resolution. Sources: [1]http://www.merriam-webster.com... [2]http://dictionary.reference.com... [3]http://edglossary.org... [4]http://www.merriam-webster.com...

Standardized testing I have two main arguments for Standardized Testing: 1. K-12 schooling only exists to prepare you for your life after you graduate, whether that be college, military, joining the workforce, etc. Standardized tests only really matter if you plan to go to college. If you intend to go to college but are against tests, you are sorely misguided as to what goes on in a college setting. Standardized tests prepare students for what is going to happen in college, as well as in most jobs where you will have to complete tasks under a deadline. It is true that school should be a place that values learning and creativity over preparation for the real world, but that is not what we are debating here and therefore is non-topical. If school actually was a place where students were encouraged to learn whatever they desired, then yes, standardized testing would not fit that model. But that is not the reality, and standardized tests fit in with the current schooling system. 2. Standardized testing provides a benchmark to measure students off of. There are numerous nationwide tests within the United States alone, as well as tests that are taken internationally. These tests give us valuable information on the next generation's competence in fields such as reading, writing, and math. While it is true that there are many ways to measure intelligence and that there are plenty of people who are intelligent but do not test well, the majority must be considered over the outliers to give us more accurate data. On top of all that, the fact of the matter is that many other ways of "measuring" intelligence are extremely subjective. To give a hypothetical example, if someone is a talented artist and does incredible progressive art in a style no one has ever seen before, they may still be shunned by those who do not enjoy it. Standardized tests only use certain subjects for a reason; those subjects are not subjective and can be easily measured. There is a right and a wrong answer. Art and Music are certainly things that you can be accomplished in, but they will never be things that can be used to measure a student's intelligence. In regards to the stress argument my opponent presents, welcome to the real world. Students who "give up because they know they are going to fail" will not survive in a high intensity work scenario anyways. Students that do good on homework and schoolwork but bomb test after test are in the overwhelming minority. 99% of the time, if you study for a standardized test and actually want to pass it, you will. The issues presented are only present in small amounts, and standardized testing benefits the students in the long run, as well as our society as a whole by providing relevant information of the intelligence of our youth.

Standardised testing should not be abolished. I will now proceed to my arguments. C1) QuantifiabilityOne of the biggest advantages of standardised testing is quantifiability. By definition, standardised tests are scored in a consistent manner, and all test-takers are required to complete the same questions. Thus the ability of individual students, classes, schools and districts can be objectively measured against averages in the class, school, district or nation. Such a measure is needed for numerous purposes, all of which have great importance. Abolishing standardised tests is thus not desirable. I will elaborate under two headings below. SC1) Quantifying knowledge and abilityAn important purpose of standardised testing is to gauge students' knowledge and ability. Schools can use this measure to decide how to allocate resources to facilitate teaching. For example, supplementary lessons and homework can be given to low achievers, and classes can be formed according to ability, so there are fewer discrepancies in each class and teachers can teach more effectively, focusing on basic knowledge when teaching lower achievers and speeding to more advanced concepts when teaching more capable students. Abolishing standardised testing makes this type of assessment much harder to carry out. The measure is also essential for university entrance. For example, in Hong Kong, our universities select students through the JUPAS system. Students' results in the HKDSE, a comprehensive standardised test, are sent to universities through the system. Individual faculties or departments will then weigh the students' scores with a formula (for example, a science faculty might allocate greater weight to Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology). It would be unthinkable to abolish the HKDSE, or the universities will no longer have any objective criterion on which to assess applicants. Dr Richard P. Phelps, an expert on standardised testing, noted that abolishing standardised testing will lead to 'large-scale institution of remedial programs in colleges to compensate for any deficiencies of instruction in elementary and secondary schools'. (4)SC2) Quantifying the effectiveness of teachingStandardised tests measure teaching prowess. Parents choosing schools for their children, for example, can rely on these objective statistics to choose a school who will likely improve their children's academic performance. This also motivates schools to improve their examination results. If they improve them, capable students will be more likely to choose their school, further boosting their results. This creates a virtuous circle. Statistics from standardised tests are also important for policy planning. Governments can use these stats to determine the relative success of different schools so as to formulate strategies to improve pedagogy. For example, if it's found that a school scoring high in maths adopted a certain strategy, the government can introduce it to other schools. Schools can also use these results to assess the teaching prowess of their teachers. If some teachers are found to be incompetent or lazy, the school can urge them to improve accordingly (such as by providing training courses or threatening demotion if no improvement is shown). As you can see from the above, scores from standardised tests are a good way to measure the effectiveness of pedagogy. Thus they should not be done away with. C2) FairnessStandardised tests are fair because objective criteria are used to assess performance. Multiple-choice questions are generally marked using a scanner and computer. For DBQs and essay-type questions, marking schemes are fixed and usually rigid, so the risk of bias, favouritism and subjective interpretation is minimised. For example, a teacher cannot give a student a lower grade because of s/he does not agree with what the student wrote, as long as the student provided most of the points in the marking scheme. The majority of students agree: 79% found the questions in standardised testing 'fair', according to a 2006 study. (3) Should we abolish standardised testing, we would have to rely on grades given by teachers, which is very problematic. According to research, teachers often consider factors other than competence when they grade students, including 'student participation, perceived effort, progress over the period of the course, and comportment'. (4) Moreover, all students face the same questions and are put on the same curve. Without standardised testing, we can only use a student's internal results to measure his performance. However, this is not fair as many schools may thus inflate students' scores to improve their chances of success, such as by using easier test questions. Also, if a school is weak in a particular area, say English, then it will be much easier to score an A in English in that school. This is unfair to students studying in schools that are great at English. Therefore, a standardised approach is the only fair method to assess students, and standardised tests should not be abolished. C3) Increased motivationSC1) Teachers' motivationTeachers may feel accomplished if their classes have superior results in standardised tests, and shame if their classes do worse than average. I'll give an admittedly anectodal example for illustration purposes only. More than a decade ago, the classes of one of my teachers did very badly in the former HKCEE examination. The principle shamed him in front of all the teachers, declaring an explanation. Since that year, he has worked very hard to improve his teaching methods, prepare better notes and even to arrangd all the past test questions by topic for students for drilling. This greatly boosted his students' results; at one time, 30% got an A and 80% got Credit or above. To this day, he remains one of the most popular teachers because of his dedication towards teaching. Standardised tests motivate teachers to improve teaching methods, and their abolition would remove this pressure on teachers. Thus they should not be abolished. SC2) Students' motivationMeasuring students' abilities motivates them to improve these abilities. Economist Dan Ariely said, 'If we want to change what they care about, we should change what we measure. ' (1) If students know their ability will be assessed, they will have greater impetus to work hard and succeed in these tests. Standardised tests give students a clear goal as to what they want to achieve and what they should do to achieve it:-There is a clearly defined curriculum that determines what will and won't be tested. There are fewer worries that they will be tested on material they have not prepared for. -Question types are more or less fixed, so students can drill themselves on the common question types to achieve greater gain in the test. In a non-standardised test, however, this is not possible; they may have to complete questions of a type they have never tried before. -Past papers are generally available, so students can easily familiarise themselves with the types of questions they will come across, the most commonly tested material, how their work will be marked and so on. For example, according to rubrics from past papers, the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority believes that unemployment has three costs: increase in crime rate, loss of skills and loss of output; the cost of retraining workers is explicitly excluded. Were the test not standardised, we wouldn't be sure if the cost of retraining workers is a cost of unemployment. Thanks to standardised testing and past papers, we can be sure. A clear curriculum, fixed question types and past papers allow students to achieve a good grade more easily than in a non-standardised test, where there are many variables they cannot predict before taking the test (including the question types, materials tested and the acceptability of answers). Therefore, standardised tests grant students, in economic terms, greater returns at lower risk, and thus motivate students to work harder. Statistically, it cannot be denied that standardised testing encourages students to work harder. In fact, 93% of the studies related to standardised testing done in the last 100 years found a positive impact on student achievement as a result of standardised testing. (2) The passing rate of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System rose from 45% in 1999, the year of its introduction, to 67% in 2002. (5) Given this stat, there is no reason for us to abolish standardised testing again. C4) Develop positive attributes like perseverance, diligence, etc. Standardised testing is a good way for students to learn skills, values and attitudes like perseverance and diligence. They often have a large curriculum that involves not only memorisation but also the acqusition of a wide variety of skills and abilities. For example, in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education determines our future. Once we step into Senior Secondary (~high school), we have three years to prepare for this all-important test. This is an important test of our perseverance, diligence, concentration and resilience. Preparing for a high-stakes test is an important life event that allows us to develop these important attributes and prepare ourselves for life after school. (1) . https://www.washingtonpost.com...(2) Richard P. Phelps, "The Effect of Testing on Achievement: Meta-Analyses and Research Summary, 1910–2010,” Nonpartisan Education Review, Apr. 2011 (3) . http://standardizedtests.procon.org...(4) . http://standardizedtests.procon.org...;(5) . http://www.nytimes.com...

Standardized Tests While standardized testing has long been criticized in all sorts of manners, but the fact of the matter remains that standardized testing is one of the only objective, unbiased methods of comparing college applicants. Standardized testing has no biases because there is no interpretation of correct and incorrect, what is correct is correct and what is not is incorrect. In other types of assessment there is room for error. One scorer can be more favorable than another and give higher scores. The odds of admission are then skewed towards the students who's assessments were scored by aforementioned scorer, and it is purely by luck rather than by skill or hard work. Critics claim that standardized tests are harmful to the educational process. In practice, this does not seem to be true. Countries like Finland, Korea, and Germany consistently place higher than the US in OECD Educational rankings, yet are more highly focused on standardized testing than the US. Rising powers like China and India also focus greatly on standardized testing. In fact a single important standardized test determines your college in India. Look where their educational models have taken them. Clearly the US is not teaching to the test well enough. Even with the largest educational budget in the world, the US ranks 33rd out of developed nations in English reading, our own language! Standardized testing has been unjustly vilified in America. Just as an aside though it has no bearing on the debate, I am a high school student.

National testing will improve educational equality National tests will not improve educational equality, for they will be tailored towards the dominant group. National tests are written largely by the ethnic majority within states (e.g. white men and women in the United States) with a certain unintentional bias toward these ethnic groups, putting minorities at a slight disadvantage. National testing also effectively penalizes schools that have a diverse population of students. Because diverse schools more frequently have statistically underperforming minority groups, non-native speakers, or disabled groups, they are much more likely to "fail" and be penalized. National testing, therefore, effectively penalizes diversity in schools. improve this

Standardized testing is a good thing I appreciate my opponent's response.I will address your counterarguments:PARCC tesing: The PARCC is only being used officially by a small group of states (approx. 15) as well as D.C..[1] As stated, standardized tests are a false, superficial measure of assesment. As you alluded to by stating, " The questions on standardized testing are not meant to measure deep and creative thinking - they are to measure if you can understand a math problem or read a passage correctly and understand that." If these tests are supposedly meant to prepare students for mcollege and careers, how can they omit assessment of creative or complex thinking. While you may think deep or analytical thinking cannot be aquired at any school, I assert that it depends on the school and the teacher. Focusingh on standardized testing and how to work the computer that administers the test does interfere with such endeavors. Although fairly new, the tests are already being criticized by parents, teachers, students and administrators.Here are some responses:Parents and teachers flooded Wednesday’s open public testimony session to complain about the new tests, which will be administered to all students in grades 3-11 in March and again in May. Some held “No PARCCING” signs. Others pulled their children out of class to have them testify.Marie Corfield, a teacher in Flemington, said the combination of the new Common Core standards and the implementation of PARCC tests has teachers “overwhelmed, stressed to the breaking point.” “I feel like I’m living in a bad dream and can’t wake up,” Corfield said.[2] Some schools have downsized or closed their libraries to make room for more computers that can be used for testing, said Arlen Kimmelman, president of the New Jersey Assocation of School Libraries. While the addition of more technology may seem beneficial, students don’t know how to use it if the libraries aren’t open for them to meet with librarians, Kimmelman said. “The testing shouldn’t be squeezing out school library sources that are needed for students to be college and career ready,” Kimmelman said.[2] a sixth-grader...isn’t planning to take the exams. PARCC takes time away from classes that teach students to be creative, original, intelligent and brave, she said. “Unfortunately testifying in front of the State School Board isn’t all fun and games, because I will now have go write up a report about my experience here today and present it to my social studies class,”...“There are no standardized answers for this kind of education. "[2] Jacob Hartmann...said he doesn’t feel teachers are truthful about the importance of the tests, which are planned to eventually become a graduation requirement. Some teachers have said PARCC tests aren’t important, but others have told students their performance will impact their future. “I’m more than positive that if I do decide to attend Princeton, they will not be asking about my PARCC scores,” Hartmann said.[2] Screens freezing was only one of several common complaints about the PARCC field tests at schools across the state. ..88.4 percent of school administrators in the state expressed “anxiety” about the forthcoming PARCC tests, citing as major issues computers that either didn’t work or logged students out without warning, and confusing instructions. Shutz blames the freezing screens on inadequate computers and poorly designed software. “Half the problems were with the test, and half were with our technology,” she says.[3] Standardized test objectivity: The PARCC test are no more objective than previous standardized tests. While the grading is computerized, the questions are created by humans and thus prone to bias. Standardized test reliability: These tests are always more focused on memorization and regurgitation of information than grasping the concepts involved. Differences (amongst scores): The scoring methods are not reliable, inasmuch as differences in score do not necessarily illustrate differences in ability or comprehension between test takers. Bias: The bias that is being referred to is bias inherent in the test itself. This is often referred to as cultural bias. Here are some related issues: Schools at times suspend, expel, “counsel out” or otherwise remove students with low scores in order to boost school results and escape test-based sanctions mandated by the federal government’s “No Child Left Behind” law, at great cost to the youth and ultimately society. “although in recent years test makers have attempted to address concerns about test bias by establishing review committees to ‘scour’ the tests for bias, and by using statistical procedures, significant problems remain in the content of the questions, the cultural assumptions inherent in the ‘wanted’ answers, etc.” Discriminatory item selection:Jay Rosner, executive director of the Princeton Review Foundation, which provides test preparation programs for the college-entrance Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), reported in 2003 that potential SAT questions which are answered correctly more often by black students than white students are rejected by the test makers. This was apparently done to assure that test results (showing African-Americans scoring lower than whites) would be “consistent” from year to year. Outright racism:A series of questions on the 2006 global history New York State Regents exam asked students to describe how Africa “benefitted” from imperialism. Using this 150-year-old quote: “We are endeavoring … to teach the native races to conduct their own affairs with justice and humanity, and to educate them alike in letters and in industry,” students were asked to name “two ways the British improved the lives of Africans.” Socio-economic bias masquerading as cultural diversity:The 2006 New York State Regents third grade reading practice test used the example of African-American tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams to ask children questions about tennis “doubles” and country clubs. Lack of cultural awareness:A Latina “bias reviewer” caught this item while reviewing questions prepared for the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. “I remember one question that showed a picture of a couch on a porch and asked, ‘What doesn’t fit?’ ” she says. “I started laughing…the way I grew up, everyone had a couch outside.”[4] Standardized tests :knowledge' accuracy: My opponent states, "The test covers the whole cirriculum that the student needs to know and understand." Perhaps, but from who's perpsective. Standardized test assume that everyone learns in the same manner. This is not always the case. Standardized test (achievement): I cited my source. It mentions how Finland uses thes techniques rather than large scale standardized testing. "...Standardized achievement test scores should be regarded as rough approximations of a student's status with respect to the content domain represented by the test. For several important reasons, standardized achievement tests should not be used to judge the quality of education. The overarching reason that students' scores on these tests do not provide an accurate index of educational effectiveness is that any inference about educational quality made on the basis of students' standardized achievement test performances is apt to be invalid. Employing standardized achievement tests to ascertain educational quality is like measuring temperature with a tablespoon. Tablespoons have a different measurement mission than indicating how hot or cold something is. Standardized achievement tests have a different measurement mission than indicating how good or bad a school is. Standardized achievement tests should be used to make the comparative interpretations that they were intended to provide. They should not be used to judge educational quality."[6] Basically standardized test measure how well inequality, classism and segregation in schools has worked. Standardized Test (Teacher support): It depends on the teacher. Many teachers do not support the tests or the testing. Standardized Test (Stakes): There should be no punishment for teachers until school are standardizedf and offered the same amount of support. Why should a teacher responsible for 30+ students be expected to perform at the same level as a teacher responsible for 15-20 (on average)? Standardized Test (high stakes): Threatening to fire teachers or take away school funding is high stakes. Students that are suspected to perform poorly on these tests are suspended. Standardized Test (Ability): Finland uses these test at the secondary level, yet, do not solely depend on them for assessment. Here are some suggested reasons why Finland excels in education: - The Finnish school system uses the same curriculum for all students. - Students have light homework loads. - Finnish schools do not have classes for gifted students. - Finland uses very little standardized testing. - Finland has a comprehensive preschool program that emphasizes “self-reflection” and socializing, not academics. - Grades are not given until high school, and even then, class rankings are not compiled. - School funding is higher for the middle school years, the years when children are most in danger of dropping out. - College is free in Finland.[5] Standardized Test (Racism): As stated, the racism is in the development of the tests, not the scoring. Standardized tests assume that all sttudents learn the same and have had the same quality education. This is a flawed assumption. I await my opponent's response. http://www.parcconline.org... [1]http://www.nj.com... [2]http://njmonthly.com... [3]http://parentsacrossamerica.org... [4]http://www.greatschools.org... [5]http://www.ascd.org... [6]

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States Mandated Tests Pushed as Civil Rights for Children Layton 15 By Lyndsey Layton, Copyright " The Washington Post Company Apr. 11, 2015 http://sks.sirs.com... Advocates for poor and minority children are pushing a novel idea: standardized tests as a civil right. The nation's major civil rights groups say that federally required testing - in place for a decade through existing law - is a tool to force fairness in public schools by aiming a spotlight at the stark differences in scores between poor, minority students and their more affluent counterparts. And they are fighting legislative efforts to scale back testing as lawmakers on Capitol Hill rewrite the nation's main federal education law, known as No Child Left Behind. "Removing the requirement for annual testing would be a devastating step backward, for it is very hard to make sure our education system is serving every child well when we don't have reliable, comparable achievement data on every child every year," Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, said in recent testimony before the Senate education panel. Her group joined 20 civil rights organizations to lobby Congress to keep the requirement to test all children each year in math and reading. The civil rights argument adds a new dimension to one of the most contentious education issues in decades: whether standardized testing is good for students. Congress is wrestling with that question as it reauthorizes No Child Left Behind. The Senate education panel is expected to begin debating a bipartisan bill next week that would maintain annual testing, but it is unclear how the bill will fare in the House, where conservative Republicans want to drastically scale back the federal role in education. Critics say the testing mandate hasn't done much to narrow the gap in scores but has drained the joy from classrooms, fostering a testing fixation that critics blamed for ills including narrowed curriculums and cheating scandals. A growing number of parents around the country are having their children opt out of federally required standardized tests, and people including President Obama and comedian Louis C.K. have complained. "It's reached a level where people are saying 'enough is enough,' " said Robert Schaeffer of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, which wants to end the standardized testing mandate. "People are sick of the overkill of test volume and the consequences, ridiculous things like rating art teachers based on the reading test scores in their schools."

On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States First, addressing my opponents observation of my plagiarism. I have given credit to Lisa Adams as stated: Lisa Adams, Research Associate, Joseph Pedulla, Professor at Boston College, George Madaus, Professor at Boston College, 2003, Theory into practice, 42.1, p. 18-29 I would also like to point out that the link my opponent has posted is not valid. May I also ask for the source for your definition of Standardized Testing? Contention 1: Notice how my opponent said that the only way for a child to retain information is through a standardized test. However, that is not always true. Although there are students who study and remember information, many teachers will FOCUS on the test, and afterwards, forget about making sure the students remember. This is called teaching to the test. Many students will remember the information ONLY for the test, and not for remembering information in the future. Contention 2: Yes, standardized tests can compare students, but is that necessarily good? Like you stated in your last contention, standardized tests can BOOST your confidence, but when you are compared with other students for other districts, doesn't that tear down your confidence, knowing that colleges are looking for smart people and you just aren't the smartest. Also, as I pointed out in my case, standardized testing can discriminate against students who have just moved here from foreign countries, or their families are too poor to help provide a stable learning system. This can create achievement gaps between them and middle and upper class students who are given plenty of tools and guides to help their education. Contention 3: As my entire contention three says, teachers are often hurt by standardized tests, because it forces them to teach something they aren't used to teaching. I would also like to say that my opponent's "professionals" are just teachers and parents. And although they are somewhat connected to standardized tests(their students take the tests), they don't have the right to be called "professionals". Adding to that, notice how the resolution says "beneficial". This means that my opponent should focus on how it is "beneficial", not teachers having a bias towards standardized testing. Contention 4: I have done my own part of research. and have found that standardized testing is actually only a quarter of a percent of the total US education budget. The USA spends more than a billion dollars on Standardized Testing ALONE! Can you imagine what else we can do with this money, instead of using it on tests that students forget about in a month afterwards anyways? We can help support the fight against ISIS, we can advance our research on Ebola. We could do all sorts of things with the billion dollars we spend EACH year on standardized testing. Contention 5: Just because a test is "fair", does not mean it is "beneficial". A fair test could compose of random questions that anyone could answer, but that doesn't make it "beneficial". This argument is not relevant to this debate Contention 6: My opponent is using statistics to dehumanize students who have suicide. as they say, "On the news, you probably see stories about kids commiting suicide because of standardized testing. Those cases however, are extremely rare. What is common, is self esteem causing confidence. People tend to over exaggerate the small examples of bad things happening but tend to ignore positivity." Basically, what they are trying to say is that it's okay for a small fraction of students to suicide(STUDENTS!) because it helps the majority have confidence, which it doesn't necessarily, as I stated in my attack on their case. I would also like to point out that my opponent does not have any source or quote on this contention, making it a bias and frankly unfair contention. If my opponent were to have this contention standing at the end of the debate, I would like to kindly ask the judges to see that this contention has no warrant and should be ignored.

Resolved: Standardized test scores accurately reflect the academic value of students. First of all if you mean inconsistent in terms of a huge difference in results you are entirely wrong. Again, it will make no sense in the world for you to have major differentials between tests of the same subject. 1. Bruce Whitehead, author of "Using standardized test results as an instructional guide", states in his academic journal "One school was able to use standardized test scores to improve its curriculum as well as its educational policies." Extremely beneficial for schools and teachers are these tests. They provide a understanding of where a student stands. To my opponent, Tests are constantly worked upon to achieve perfection. Students themselves learn their weaknesses from examinations and use exams as a way to improve their academic standards. 2. My opponent does not seem to understand where im going with the educated guess respone. What I am saying is that students who do guess on tests do not do it for every single question and pass. Behind every guess is some strategy and something from a lesson must seem familiar to the student to choose his or her answer. Having to go to summer school as my opponent says, is not a curse. If you have to go to summer school is because you do not fully understand the material and your friend who made his guess and got it right most likely had some understanding of the question. Your friend had to have some background knowgledge of the material for him to even get close to passing the examination. 3. Teachers throughout the course of the year give students information as to what would be on standardized examinations and what to look out for. To those students who still feel pressure at the time of the test, I don't know what to say but we cannot just stop the tradtion and excellence of standardized testing for a handful of students who most of the time get through pressure with some counseling and help. I am happy you agree that it's silly. 4. Scores could with no doubt be used to improve teaching in the class rooms. The overall results of the class determine where they stand in general. Individually, students can be placed in classes with students who are also having a defiency in some aspect of the curriculum. Standardized testing proves to be efficient, not perfect of course, but a way to help students improve their academic value. Thanks to my opponent for this interesting debate. Vote for PRO!!! Good Luck 4.

National, standardized tests are a poor measure of student learning Any system of standardized testing (where everyone is given the same test) assumes that all students learn at the same rate. But this is not the case. Talented students and un-talented students should not be measured by the same test. Handing down a standard national test from the top is bound to end up with a "one-size-fits-all" result that doesn't suit the weakest or the best students. In the United Kingdom, national testing was introduced in 1988. By 2002, 90% of students at the best schools got the top grade, whilst 300,000 of the United Kingdom's worst pupils failed to pass. The national test 'has not only become too easy for the academically able, but it is still too difficult for the bottom 40 per cent, who cry out for… courses to help them make sense of their last three years of compulsory schooling’[1].  A ‘one-size-fits-all’ national test does not adequately measure the ability of the student, and fails to motivate students in their education. The best students find them too easy, the worst students find them too difficult. [1] Clare, J. (2003, August 5). One-size-fits-all exams fail the worst as well as the best. Retrieved July 11, 2011.    improve this

On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States Once again, con does agree to his plagiarism! He admitted that he put absolutely NO link and I am glad we could not put a period to that branch of the this discussion by agreeing that there has been plagiarism. And now to move onto first counter refutation and then counter- counter refutation. So without any further ado let me begin with counter refutations:To refute my first contention, my opponent stated:"Although there are students who study and remember information, many teachers will FOCUS on the test, and afterwards, forget about making sure the students remember. This is called teaching to the test. Many students will remember the information ONLY for the test, and not for remembering information in the future. "However, a. ) my opponent provided absolutely no evidence to show that students forget things right after the test. If you prepare a student to the test, the student will learn the material. Schools don't hand out the tests and go over every problem. They teach the information during the year and perhaps spend a month or so before the tests for preparation. That preparation is usually a summary of what was learned through out the school year. Therefore, even though yes, teachers teach information that will most likely be on the test, they don't just go through the tests. They give students worksheets and extensive practice to prepare for the test and memorize the information to use in the future. To refute my second contention, my opponent stated:" When you are compared with other students for other districts, doesn't that tear down your confidence, knowing that colleges are looking for smart people and you just aren't the smartest. "However, people must learn to face the facts. Colleges should know how students do on a scale compared to a larger amount of students. If someone just doesn't do well enough, compared to the nation, its their fault. Nobody is stupid. There are some people who don't work hard enough. In addition, losing, while this may seem illogical may boost confidence. When people loose or do not do as well as they hoped, they look forward to further improvement. And that self confidence and ability not to give up is a skill taught by standardized testing. They refuted my third contention by stating that "As my entire contention three says, teachers are often hurt by standardized tests, because it forces them to teach something they aren't used to teaching. "Every teacher is allowed to teach in a different style. It is about what they teach. And the educational guidelines suggest the same thing for every single teacher. At the end, if they want to let teachers teach with completely no restrictions, they are looking to abolish the whole education system which in fact is quite efficient. Its quite clear that the whole education system can not be banned. Teachers must teach information at an appropriate gradient for each class. They refuted my fourth contention by suggesting that " I have done my own part of research. and have found that standardized testing is actually only a quarter of a percent of the total US education budget. The USA spends more than a billion dollars on Standardized Testing ALONE! "A quarter of a percent of the budget. And then, they state that it costs 1 billion. But wait? Doesn't that mean that we make a profit? Then, my opponent goes on mentioning that we can spend this money to fight against ISIS. I would love to help stop ISIS. However, I am not apathetic to education and I am sure that the readers are not either. Next thing my opponent will suggest, is the implementation of child labor. I consider it very important to see what students have learned throughout the year and how productive the teachers have been. They refuted my 5th contention by saying:" Just because a test is "fair", does not mean it is "beneficial". "However, when students think its fair, it is implied that they admit that it is correct and that it is helpful. Students consider these questions fair which proves how not harmful these tests are. They refuted my sixth contention by saying that" Basically, what they are trying to say is that it's okay for a small fraction of students to suicide(STUDENTS! ) because it helps the majority have confidence, which it doesn't necessarily, as I stated in my attack on their case. "However, all my assertions have been proof of how standardized testing is a benefit and how students and professionals see it as a benefit. The small fraction of students have committed suicide. But lets think for a moment. Why is that number so small? Because the students who end their life because of a test are mentally ill and should have consulted a professional. Now onto counter-counter refutations. They rebuilt their point by saying This changes the curriculum, not allowing students to learn other things, such as fine arts. However, fine arts and other activities will still be in the school curriculum. Teachers blatantly will not spend the whole study day to prepare for tests. Fine arts are a required part of each students program. Math and language arts are everywhere. A large portion of the students will engage in professions which will require these two subjects. Many tests also include social studies and science. In part B, my opponent went on about how students will not be able to afford text books. However, students, rich or poor will find a way to get a text book to study if they want. There are public libraries, many schools give out free textbooks and kids can borrow from their peer. Therefore, standardized testing are about how determined one is, not about money. About disorders, many such kids are not given standardized tests. In Contention 2, Part A, they state how one size does not fit all and that does not work. However, there are guidelines for what a teacher should teach to whatever grade. And the teacher should follow those guidelines. Whenever a student is above his grade in a subject, he is technically in a different grade and takes the appropriate level test. In Contention 2 Part B, they state how schools have different curriculums. However, for the school, there are certain guidelines for what students should know in their grade level. The test matches the guidelines. In fourth grade, the test is what the student learned in 4th grade. The same goes for other tests. In Contention 3 Part A, they completely agree with what I am saying. There are guidelines. They would be here even without the test. The test, based on gradients and levels, is a recap of whether these guideline have been fulfilled or not. In standardized testing, the educational program makes a check on whether educational goals have been fulfilled to the needed extent or not. In Contention 3 Part B, they talk about paradox in my speech. Which is fact, has not happened. We never stated that these activities should be eliminated. After all, only a portion of the school day will be spent on prep and education. If one wants to take these courses, they can. And now to rebuild upon my own points. Contention 1- Taking the tests can make something be remembered by the child. Contention 2- Allow the comparison of scores of kids from different districts. Contention 3- Proffesionals and parents support standardized testing. Contention 4- Standardized testing is a huge, indisposable industry. Contention 5- Students consider standardized testing fair and square. Contention 6- Standardized tests raise students confidence.

A good motivater to improve teaching and test standards. Competition is a healthy part of the learning process. If children are coddled as equals and spoon-fed, then standards fall: Since children are not prepared for the unfairness in the real-world. Pedagogy is not the order of the day.Children need to learn how to learn/work independently/with-each-other(develop social/study skills). Teachers should not be pressured into becoming impertinent overbearing pushy people. Schools where performance is very mediocre have a much better chance of improving, than schools where most students are doing very well.

Standardized Tests are Ideal for College Admission Standardized Testing is not the best option because they need to be adaptive to a student. Many students are not testing people yet have been proven to be college students. I have a personal experience where a friend of mine got a 19 on the Act, and because of that, got accepted only to Miami Dade College. After having struggled in high school and receiving a 2.004, she was told by her guidance counselor that McDonald's manager was a perfect job that would make her plenty of money and a decent healthcare plan. When she entered her 1st year of college, she quit McDonald's in a risk to have a better future. Because of her hard work, she has a 3.402 GPA and has passed every test, with no lower than a B on any midterm and all A on final tests, except on her English 101 and 102 test that she got C's on because of her mild dyslexia. She is now in her 5 year of college at FIU going for her masters in Psychology. -Danna P. (Close-Friend and the one that broke the system) This is just one of 5 experiences I have that show how unreliable the ACT and SAT tests are. (Other ones are mine, my mom's, my girlfriends, and best friend's mom) Besides the tests themselves, the two tests have changed the type of education that our children our currently being taught. Because the schools are being pushed to have as many high school to college students. This is explicitly said by the Secretary of Education. This is good, but because of the way college acceptance relies on these tests, teachers are forced to change from more interactive and all-encompassing education, to focusing on certain aspects of a subject and take away from what could help those with futures in labor jobs and need more interactive and on the job training rather than intense in class room lectures. http://www.ed.gov...

Education: Testing No matter the intelligence level of one student versus another, if the nation decided against standardized testing, measurements would seem unfair when basing students and teachers off of tests created by individual school systems. "Standardized tests are reliable and objective measures of student achievement. Without them, policy makers would have to rely on tests scored by individual schools and teachers who have a vested interest in producing favorable results. Multiple-choice tests, in particular, are graded by machine and therefore are not subject to human subjectivity or bias" (2). In order to measure students" knowledge and ability across the country, it is necessary to compare students. The tests which these students take must be the same, therefore no test is more difficult than another. Proponents of standardized testing would agree with this statement due to the fact that "standardized tests are a fair and objective measure of student achievement, that they ensure teachers and schools are accountable to taxpayers, and that the most relevant constituents " parents and students " approve of testing" (2). As stated before, it is very necessary and just for tests across the nation to all be the exact same. If they varied, so would the scores, so would the measurements of the school systems, and so would the tax paying of the schools and teachers.

standardized testing should be eliminated Positive Aspects of Standardized Testing 1) Standardized testing gives teachers direction to help them conclude what to teach students and when to teach it. The outcome is more efficient instructional time and a simplified way of timeline management. 2) Standardized testing tells parents and the school how well students are faring across the country and locally. This can also indicate how your local area is doing compared against the national landscape. You need standardized testing to see where the problems are. Without the level knowledge that it gives, certain problems won't be recognized and dealt with. 3) Since all students in a school are doing identical tests, standardized tests provide an accurate comparison across groups. Over the years great improvements have been made with regards to test bias, which has led to more accurate assessments and comparisons. 4) Standardized testing permits students' progress to be tracked over the years. When students take the same type of test yearly, which is adjusted for grade level, it is easy to see if a student is improving, degrading, or not changing. This assesses the teacher and the child. 5) It improves the accountability of students and schools and motivates students to learn the material. Knowledge is cumulative, so a student doing poor early can end up behind indefinitely. 6) It costs 50 cents to $5 to score an essay, compared with pennies for each multiple-choice question. According to the new York times. Standardized testing simply makes education more stable, level, cheap, adaptable, and allows for better assessment.

Standardized Tests Challenge accepted, Standardized tests should not be used from Grades 1-12 as they discourage critical thinking skills, take away valuable time that could be used to educate students in a classroom, and fail to accurately assess a students academic progress. These reasons are just my starting point and only scratch the surface of the problems associated with standardized tests. I have many more reasons against the use of standardized tests, however, I will save those reasons for when the debate officially begins.

National testing will ensure all students learn the same, essential skills and information National testing does not ensure students learn the same, important skills and information. Many essential skills, like the development of confidence, public-speaking skills and innovation cannot be tested. However, the focus on standardized testing encourages teachers to just teach skills and information that will increase test results rather than focus on deeper understanding and life lessons that can be applied in life generally. National testing does not inspire a love of learning. The most important part in education is that students develop a love of learning, so that they seek to learn on their own, outside of school. National testing, however, makes learning such a strict process that it does not inspire such a love of learning, failing the most important test of a good educational system. improve this

Too much focus on test prepation to the detriment of other skills As a result of preparing for exams which could decide the outcome of whether a person goes to college or not teachers tend to "teach to the test" and not around it meaning that skills and subjects outside the test can become secondary to succeeding when they shouldn't be. Currently the Standardized Assessment Test I focuses on verbal and mathematical abilities rather then on the wider subjects meaning more emphasis is put on English and maths rather than on other subjects which deserve more attention. [[ Richard C Atkinson "Achievement Versus Aptitude Tests" http://www.ucop.edu/pres/speeches/achieve.htm%5D%5D Its rival exam the ACT tests scientific reasoning and a persons essay writing capabilities on a current affairs issue in addition to english and mathematics[[ ACT "The ACT Test" http://www.act.org/aap/%5D%5D but this does not cover the range of subjects. Admittedly the person who made the point about Atkinson was not arguing that all standardised tests should be abolished but it is a strong indicator against having standardised tests given the variety of professions that high school students may be looking to go in through.

on balance standardized testing is benifical for k-12 education Welcome to debate. org, an open debating community for all. Framework: According to google, "is" in the context of the resolution means "third person singular present of be". This impies present tense only, Therefore, as the Con, all I have to do is to prove that the status quo is not beneficial. I do not have to argue about POTENTIAL benefits of standardized testing; just the actual real world effect. If I show a detrimental effect, I ought to win the round. I do not have to advocate for NO testing, I can argue for reform. Contention 1: Exclusion A. Standardized testing excludes students with disablilities . http://web.a.ebscohost.com... Eric Badtscher-Senior Technical Writer writes that Standardized testing fails to account that not all children learn in the same manner. Also, Standardized tests exclude students who are bad at test taking from receiving higher education B. Classism and For-Profit Testing Standardized testing creates a profit motive behind testing instead of a learning motive, According to Broussard, Data Professor at NYU "14. . http://www.theatlantic.com... He writes that "standardized tests are not based on general knowledge. .. they are based on specific knowledge contained in specific sets of books: the textbooks created by the test makers. " Therefore, because private companies create these tests, they contain the specific information solely in the textbook, forcing schools to rely on textbooks created by the company itself. However, since poor schools cannot afford some of these books or at least not in sufficient quantity, poor students and schools do worse under testing regimes. . http://www.omegalearning.com... According to By David Miller Sadker, PhD, data confirms that poor students, especially minorities, fail standardized tests far more often. "Even moderate income differences could result in major test score differences. In Ohio, almost half of the students from families with incomes below $20,000 failed the state exams, while almost 80 percent of students from families earning more than $30,000 passed those same exams. " This is unfair to poorer schools because they cannot afford these books and the students don"t know what to expect for the test and therefore don"t perform as well. Because these students cannot pass, this directly increases the dropout rate. C: Cheating The high stakes of these tests incentivizes large amounts of students and even administration to cheat on exams. This nullifies my opponents argument that the data is good. The data is flawed because it is tampered with and inaccurate . . http://www.scpr.org... The National Center for Fair & Open Testing found cases of cheating on standardized tests in 37 states across the country. Cheating occurred in 197 districts in the past year alone. Contention 2: Dropout rate. The goal of education is to increase the life skills of students in order to prepare them for the real world. However, standardized testing is detrimental to that by increasing dropout rates. According to Advancement Project "10 . http://fairtest.org... "From 1996 until 2002 (when NCLB became law), 68 of the 100 largest urban districts had rising graduation rates. Twenty-four of them achieved double-digit increases in their graduation rates, while only four had double-digit drops during that period. From 2002 until 2006, however, 73 of the 100 largest districts experienced declining graduation rates. Seventeen experienced at least a double-digit drop in their graduation rates. " . http://www.educationworld.com... Now my opponent may claim this is only a correlation, but 28 states require students to pass a standardized test in order to pass high school. If they cannot pass than they are forced to drop out. . https://b.3cdn.net... The Advancement project also talks about how testing increases incentivization to kick out failing students. If students consistently do badly on exams than teachers have an incentive to kick them out in order to raise the average score. The Impact of dropouts is very large. . http://www.slj.com... School Library Journal reports that dropouts are 8 times more likely to be arrested. . http://lifescapesolutions.com... . http://www.statisticbrain.com... According to multiple sources dropouts commit 75% of crime. This impact is the largest in the round, as if education makes people criminals than it fails to do its job Conclusion Vote Con based off my impacts. Spelling should go Con as Pro misspelled beneficial. Thanks for the very short round

No Child Left Behind Act Standardized tests ensures students learn essential information.

State Standardized Tests None of that has to to with the debate topic. Unless you're saying that standardized tests are useless because absolute knowledge is unobtainable. That's kinda silly though. The goal of education and science are to create models of what seems to be reality, not to understand reality exactly. Absolute knowledge is unnecessary. Rockets and computers and heart surgery work just fine without absolute knowledge. But in order to become an astronaut or computer scientist or heart surgeon, a person needs to demonstrate that he possesses the required knowledge and is capable of obtaining more. Furthermore, because not everyone can be an astronaut or computer scientist or heart surgeon, there needs to be a means by which to compare people so that the most capable people are rewarded for their achievement. That's why standardized tests are necessary.

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to k-12 education in the United States. http://www.alternet.org... Using student standardized test scores to evaluate teachers, a trend gaining steam in a growing number of states in recent years as a result of the federal "Race to the Top" program, isn"t about improving education. It is, and always has been, about ranking, sorting, and shaming schools and educators. But, just as controversial testing regimens don"t accurately capture student learning or progress in the classroom, standardized, homogenized teacher evaluations don"t capture what teachers do for students. Teaching and learning is hardly a beauty pageant. Educators and kids are more than a set of scores. Still, Americans like information for its own sake; we like to create and consume lists and databases, analyses and reviews, to stare at numbers before we make decisions even if, like Yelp reviews, they"re as predictive as tea leaves. Though a Virginia parent sued for teacher evaluation and observations to be made available to the public, educators who have been in the classroom know that the information published is little more reliable than that onratemyteacher.com (where, if you look me up, you"ll discover that I was simultaneously "the best," "the worst," "real cool," and "hype," as both compliment and insult). How does publishing a teacher"s standardized test results support students and teachers? How does it turn into anything more than an adult-world re-creation of class rank, where we are shamed into competing against each other instead of working together to actually improve? How does it do more for parents than chatting in the parking lot or posting on Facebook groups would do? Evaluations based on testing don"t show the hours we teachers spend researching, planning, and reflecting on lessons that will never be listed on an evaluation form. The standardized tests on which our evaluations are based often don"t even align with the curricula we teach. And, instead of being an authentic element of ongoing professional growth and development, classroom observations have become just one more task for overburdened administrators to complete: even the best-intentioned principals often can"t find the time in their days to get into our classrooms to experience the interactions taking place among our students. When I taught a reading program for 9th graders while still at Kensington CAPA High School in Philadelphia, my students began the year with an average reading level equivalent to a mid-term fourth grader. We created a safe space for learning, and worked hard, together; after a semester, most of my students improved by at least one grade level on reading assessments. The students felt pride in and ownership of their growth; my principal brought guests in to observe the great work that was going on in the program. But on state-mandated standardized tests, my students still scored "below basic" because even the two or three years of progress they made in one year meant that they were still reading at levels below what was expected of rising 10th graders. They were labeled failing; as their teacher, I was a failure, too. The tests could not show what was taking place in our classroom. The woman dubbed "the worst teacher in New York" taught in just such a classroom, and the truth about her teaching couldn"t have been further from the picture the "rankings" (and then the press) painted of her. The tests and the evaluations that are based on them are unable to accurately portray what happens in classes and schools where students are mobile, speaking different languages, coming and leaving at different times during the school year, where students are already performing far above or below grade level, or where poverty is a factor in students" readiness for school and the resources available in schools themselves. Just as all children are more than the sum of their test scores, so are their teachers. If you want to understand what"s going on in your child"s classroom,there are countless ways for parents and families to learn more and become more engaged in their childrens" education. If we work together " if you don"t listen to advocates who want the public to view teachers as the enemy in the battle to educate children "sharing notes and communicating about your child (and about the work he or she is doing in my class ), we can help your child succeed in my class and outside it. You"ll learn far more about me and about your child in my class from talking to me than looking up some unreliable, meaningless standardized test score online. My colleagues and I actually crave feedback and opportunities to grow; we want professional observation and evaluation to be more in depth, intensive and useful. Our unions are leading the charge on this front, researching, developing training and models of effective teacher evaluation. We are constantly seeking better methods of helping our students. There are effective ways to engage with peers and principals to delve deeply into goals and practices in the classroom, and when we invest our time and resources into these best practices, teachers and students benefit. But we must resist the urge to artificially simplify those necessarily complex and time consuming evaluations just to feed the data monster with statistics and test scores. Information is important, but context is everything " which is something we"d love to teach your kids, too, if we could only find some time in between test prep sessions.

Standardized testing should remain in our schools. Alright, let's go.I am assuming when you talk of "our schools" you mean US schools, correct?Therefore I will be basing my argumentation on the US school system.Sadly, Standardized testing is one of the cornerstones of present day US schooling. Administered generally by the state, such as the Regents examinations in NY, they are a overall assessment of a subject such as chemistry. Most states have these, or comparable, examinations, which nearly always have a direct impact on the students grade. This already creates a problem due to these reasons. The test is a one time assessment, and doesn't consider a plethora of factors that could negatively impact the score such as anxiety. Also, due for it being a one time assessment, individual growth is not considered. A teacher may have helped a student grow tremendously over the year, but the student still fails to score proficient. Adequate yearly progress (http://teaching.about.com...) which is part of the No child Left Behind project, focuses soly on that one grade. This creates a further problem, since if schools perform badly on standardized tests, the No child Left Behind project can oversee that particular school, and leave little control in the schools hands. Due to the test having a major impact on the students grade, teachers are pressured to teach to the test, under a strict curriculum that doesn't allow room for creativity on the teachers and the students part. Since the Standardized tests determine much of a students school life, several other problems arise. Minority's are at a disadvantage, since they often have inadequate educations. When they score low on standardized tests, they are placed into Special Ed programs, which they rarely can grow out of. So the standardized tests cause minority's to have less chances to progress in school, or even get admitted to certain schools (http://www.naacpldf.org...) Furthermore, Standardized tests are not an accurate examination of a students skill level. A recent study showed that colleges barred students from attending their college if they had a SAT score of under 700, stating that these students would not be able to complete college work. But on the contrary, of these students 86% actually exxeled at their college freshmens year work. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said “State assessments in mathematics and English often fail to capture the full spectrum of what students know and can do. Students, parents, and educators know there is much more to a sound education than picking the right answer on a multiple-choice question.” But by the virtue of standardized tests, they are often Multiple choice So when even the Secretary of Education admits state assements are not working, clearly something is wrong, and standardized tests have to be lessened, ore even completely removed.

Resolved: Standardized test scores accurately reflect the academic value of students. Closing Argument: In my closing argument I will list some reasons for why standardized testing is an efficient way to reflect the academic value of students. 1. Gardner states "achievement data from tests provide teachers with valuable information to improve classroom and student learning". This is yet another quote that supports my claim that the tests to help to improve academics in class rooms. 2. Standardized testing is the best way to know how a student is doing. If schools were to go onto one on one testing it will incredibly time consuming. Also, my opponent said something about a child having problems at home. Believe it or not, a teacher can know if something is wrong from the results of an examination. 4. Standardized tests are also helpful in providing students with the pressure of taking education seriously. Many students want to go to college and they know that in order to get into a respectable college they have to score decent grades in the SAT. This "pressure" will cause them to take education seriously and will be beneficial in the long run. Now, I want to leave my opponent and all voters with this quote, "While there are many purposes that can be served by assessment, they are all secondary to the improvement of student learning." Thanks to my opponent for this great debate and I wish all voters will vote Pro. Thank you.

Education: Testing Although teachers find this beneficial, it is discriminatory to children who do not speak English well, exchange students who have trouble with American work, and also children with special needs who need extra help. "English language learners take tests in English before they have mastered the language. Special education students take the same tests as other children, receiving few of the accommodations usually provided to them as part of their Individualized Education Plans (IEP)" (2). The students who require extra help with their work do not receive it during these tests, which is unfair and unjust to them. Furthermore, these tests are unreliable to judge the students on their level of education and their learning performance. "A 2001 study published by the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-over-year test score improvements were temporary and "caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning..." (1). Due to the variety of students who take this test, everyone learns differently and at different paces. The test does not give an overall view of the students learning capacity.

Standardized testing is a good thing I appreciate my opponent's viewpoint, however, they seem to be viewing the situation through rose colored glasses.Issues not adequately addressed by my opponent:1. Classism - The disparity between acceess to resources, support and funding between schools is tremendous and very relevant to this debate."America's education system is unequal and unfair. Students who live in wealthy communities have huge advantages that rig the system in their favor. They have more experienced teachers and a much lower student-teacher ratio. They have more modern facilities, more up-to-date computer and science equipment, and more up-to-date textbooks. They have more elective courses, more music and art offerings, and more extracurricular programs. They have better libraries, more guidance counselors and superior athletic facilities...Not surprisingly, affluent students in well-off school districts have higher rates of high school graduation, college attendance and entry to the more selective colleges. This has little to do with intelligence or ability. For example, 82 percent of affluent students who had SAT scores over 1200 graduate from college. In contrast, only 44 percent of low-income students with the same high SAT scores graduate from college. This wide gap can't be explained by differences in motivation or smarts. It can, however, be explained by differences in money." [1]2. Racism - There are clear historical and current issues regarding racism that affect schools and education on all levels."My research shows that black parents homeschool their children due to white racism. This may come as a surprise since, for many, we live in an age of alleged color blindness and post-racialism, characterized by the declining significance of race and racism. My research found strong evidence to suggest that racism is far from being a thing of the past. I found covert institutional racism and individual racism still persist and are largely responsible for the persistence of profound racial disparities and inequalities in many social realms." [2]"Public school students of color get more punishment and less access to veteran teachers than their white peers...Such discrimination lowers academic performance for minority students and puts them at greater risk of dropping out of school..."[3]3. Poverty - Teaching children that are poverty-stricken requires more innovative approaches and techniques than those offered by traditional educational methods. One thing that is striking about Finland's educational sysem is that they do not allow obvious differences in quality of schools or education to exist. This illustrates what is lacking in schools in the U.S.. Namely, a genuine concern for all students involved in the process, an earnest desire to provide equal access and a willingness to offer the necessary support needed to implement a quality educational program at all levels of the educational process."Poverty is on the rise in America and is creating a phenomenon known as the "poverty trap."..This is important for schools because poverty greatly decreases student learning ability, and public schools and teachers must become more creative at finding ways to mitigate the negative effects of poverty in the classroom. During an era of increasing public education "reform," it's important to keep poverty in mind as a factor of student achievement...The US is currently one of only three countries in the in the OECDOECD community..that spend as little on welfare for families in poverty, that do as little for helping children in poverty, and that do not equalize educational opportunity for children in poor communities..."[4]4. Student input - The input, opinion, or concerns of students is rarely asked for by those who design and maintain the educational system. This is, at least, bad business practice. From a business standpoint alone, it is crucial to understand and meet the needs of your target audience."School districts must specifically seek student input in developing their Local Control and Accountability Plans under the revised regulations being considered for adoption by the State Board of Education Friday...“If students didn’t get a formal process, if we had no opportunity to give our voice – our voice was considered dead,”"[5]Counterrebuttal for student removal: NCLB is considered to be a failure."No Child Left Behind is really, really unpopular. Roughly three in 10 Americans think the George W. Bush-era federal education law has actually worsened the quality of education...children from low-income families...continue to struggle with vastly inadequate educational opportunities,” wrote Julian Zelizer, a Princeton history professor...Despite its bipartisan roots, No Child Left Behind, Zelizer argued, has done little to reverse those trends."[6]Counterrebuttal for item selection: Cultural bias is not always purposeful, however, in this case it appeared to be. As the citation states, "This was apparently done to assure that test results (showing African-Americans scoring lower than whites) would be “consistent” from year to year." Meaning instead of assuring unbiased results, the designers were apparently basing their desired outcomes on the lopsided results measured in the past.Counterrebuttal for Racism: To many, it is racist to suggest that imperialism improved the lives of Africans. It is also racist to suggest that the Africans were not conducting their own affairs with justice and humanity.Counterrebuttal for Socio-economic bias: The citation mentioned regarded the question as socio-economic bias masquerading as cultural diversity. How many underpriveleged 3rd graders can relate to questions about tennis “doubles” and country clubs? It is important to note that both Venus and Serena Williams were trained by their father due to the racism and bias in the sport of tennis."...In 1991 Richard Williams, who managed and coached both Serena and Venus...decided that they should enter no more tournaments on the national junior circuit...he hoped to avoid subjecting his daughters to competitive pressures, including an undertone of racial hostility."[7]Counterrebuttal for cultures: My opponent states, "...if you would just look at the SAT questions for people in her native country, that will more likely fit her culture." A statement like this illustrates cultural bias. You cannot assume that because she was a Latina that she was not born in America. The U.S. is a hodgepodge of different cultures. The test should be designed from a world view and not through a eurocentric lens.Counterrebuttal for knowledge accuracy: As stated, these tests are more about memorization and regurgitation of information rather than grasping and implementing concepts.Counterrebuttal for teacher support: My opponent's source states, "After No Child Left Behind (NCLB) passed in 2002, the US slipped from 18th in the world in math on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to 31st place in 2009, with a similar drop in science and no change in reading..."Despite using them for several decades, policymakers and educators do not yet know how to use test-based incentives to consistently generate positive effects on achievement and to improve education."[8]"The movement to boycott standardized tests and reform test-based accountability systems current being implemented across the country is growing. Though exact numbers are impossible to know, students, teachers, principals, parents, superintendents and others are speaking out for the first time calling on policy-makers to roll back test-based school reform — and in many places students are simply refusing to take new Common Core and similar standardized tests... Another important development has been the rapid increase in state and local teacher unions openly battling the overuse and misuse of tests and backing the right of parents to opt out..."[9]Counterrebuttal for stakes: My opponent stated: "The number of students is irrelivent." However, it has been proven that, "Class size is a proven and effective reform."[10] "The use of suspensions contributes to our achievement gap. Three quarters of suspensions of students 7 and younger are imposed on minority students, according to state data. Exclusionary discipline – suspensions, expulsions and student arrests – is more heavily used in our poorest school districts. "[11]Counterrebuttal for ability: I am only saying test can't be standardized until school's are.Counterrebuttal for Finland: None of the reasons cited for Finland's success are unachievable for the U.S..Counterrebuttal for racism: Cultural bias does not require slang or vulgarity. This is why standardized testing is not as important as true connections between teachers and students.Counterrebuttal for quality education: For anyone to suggest that every student in the U.S receives the same quality of education is a miscarriage of justice, to say the least.Again, I thank my opponent for participation in this discourse.http://www.huffingtonpost.com... [1]http://www.washingtonpost.com... [2]http://www.huffingtonpost.com... [3]http://www.truth-out.org... [4]http://edsource.org... [5]http://www.theatlantic.com... [6]http://www.encyclopedia.com... [7]http://standardizedtests.procon.org... [8]http://www.washingtonpost.com... [9]http://parentsacrossamerica.org... [10]http://ctmirror.org... [11]

Standardized testing accuaretly represents a student's academic ability. Thank you, Con, for starting this debate. I generally feel the same way that you do, but in the spirit of debating, I would like to "test" you if I could. hahaha I'm so punny. As Pro, I have to state what my opponent has said in his title. I believe that standardized testing accurately represents a student's academic ability. That is, for each of the subjects that are covered in the standardized tests, those parts accurately test the abilities of that student. "Standardized testing can be composed of multiple-choice, true-false, essay questions, authentic assessments, or nearly any other form of assessment. Multiple-choice and true-false items are often chosen because they can be given and scored inexpensively and quickly by scoring special answer sheets by computer or via computer-adaptive testing. Some standardized tests have short-answer or essay writing components that are assigned a score by independent evaluators who use rubrics (rules or guidelines) and benchmark papers (examples of papers for each possible score) to determine the grade to be given to a response. Most assessments, however, are not scored by people; people are used to score items that are not able to be scored easily by computer (i.e., essays). For example, the Graduate Record Exam is a computer-adaptive assessment that requires no scoring by people (except for the writing portion)."[1] These standardized exams test the important subjects, on different levels, so one would need to know how to write, decipher correct answers from the wrong ones, and deal with "true/false" statements. Standardized tests are used to examine a students ability to answer those questions in the fields of math, science, history, and English. "In the field of psychometrics, the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing place standards about validity and reliability, along with errors of measurement and individuals with disabilities. The third and final major topic covers standards related to testing applications, credentialing, plus testing in program evaluation and public policy." [2] This means that the results are accurate, and can be generalized with all of the other students who take the same or similar tests around the country. This helps keep the testing process inexpensive, fast, reliable, and accurate. Point 1. Pressure. Students are put under pressure while taking this test, and anyone who has will agree. This is also true in the workplace, because there are usually deadlines to finish work by. This actually helps students get used to the grind of the work day, because no matter what you choose as an occupation, there is going to be pressure involved. It would be impossible to test every student in their own perfect and personal environment. This would require far too much supervision and if it were to be administered anywhere outside of educational supervision, it would be void and subject to cheating anyway. As far as the dependency of the students future riding on these tests, I would disagree that for a successful future, students must do well on these tests. There are plenty of rich, successful people who didn't even finish college or do well on standardized tests. There are a few (like the SAT and the ACT) that help you get into some prestigious schools, but ones future is not dependent on these tests. 2. I agree with you that debating can be seen as an academic pursuit, and that someone with great debating skills won't be able to show the testers that they have great debating skills. However, to be a good debater, one must have the skills that they do test in standardized tests such as the English/language, history, and writing portions. A failure to spell and have good grammar would actually hinder your debating. (As seen in another debate I am currently in.) [3] Knowing history helps you to pinpoint good arguments and being up good sources to help support debating. Aside from debating, math and science are basic fundamentals in education. Sure, one could skate by only knowing basic math and science, but or someone to excel in their respective fields, one must know what they test on the standardized tests. The tests help educators find those people who deserve awards or grants to help support their future education. Again, it would be impossible to compile a test for everyone to take that would include more specific skill sets. The test is long enough as it is; adding to the test would create more pressure and would end up hurting the students who have a good grasp of English, science, math, and history because it would require them to know even more than they should at that point in their life. On a side note, I agree that there should be more specific subjects in tests, but they should be optional and used to help you occupationally so that you can find a job easier. [1] http://www.ets.org... [2] http://www.apa.org... [3] http://www.debate.org...

Holds schools accountable to their stakeholders Just what exactly is accountable in this case? Is it accountable in the. Furthermore standardised tests only provide part of the full picture of what is happening in a school. For example what pupils are learning, what teaching methods are being used, how experienced or well trained the teachers are etc[[FAPE "Accountability and Testing: Standardized testing http://www.fapeonline.org/accountability-and-testing-standardized-testing.htm Accessed 28.08.86]]. They also don't account for the demographics of an area as some kids may have to travel long distances by bus or car to get to school. How can they be made out to be the way to hold schools accountable to their stakeholders when they only provide a small part of what's needed to judge a school[[Jennifer Solis "What is the future for high school exit exams" Education News.org http://ednews.org/articles/what-is-the-future-for-high-school-exit-exam.html%5D%5D

Standardized testing accuaretly represents a student's academic ability. I am aware that this topic may not be overtly captivating but this is an upcomming topic of mine so I decided to gt some practice on it. Before I begin I would like to lay down a few rules: ------------------------------------------------------------ I want to keep this debate fairly brief for this purpose I have set the character max. to 5,000 Please do not except this debate unless you plan to respond PLEASE give me feed back, not inherently on what occurs in this debate but on additional arguments for Pro or Con if you would like to post the link to some good evidence please do that as well. Of coarse this is optional but I really would appreciate it. And with that my opening speech: Point 1. The pressure. Standardized testing creates an environment in which hinders children from being able to truly do there best. Standardized testing creates an enormous amount of pressure on kids to do well because they know that a large part of there future could be depending on these tests. In addition these test often cost money in order to take. In lower in come communities often families break there backs in order to raise enough money to purchase such tests for there children. In these cases not only is your future dependent on these tests but you are worried that you will fail thus putting $100 or so dollars that your family worked hard to earn to waste. Point 2 lack of subjects: One might say that debate is an academic pursuit and I would agree that it is. A child may be very good in debate but do poorly in math, science, language, and history. Standardized testing does not include debate so the childs one good skill would be ignored however he would do poorly on the other fields and then essentially be deemed "unintelligent. "

Standardized tests result in teachers “teaching the test” There is a degree of hypocrisy in arguing that the tests are classist and racist and then complaining that schools take too long in preparing students for them. Ideally the tests should be on relevant subjects that will be useful to the student and is needed as part of a well-rounded education that prepares the student for life, and if they are not they are flawed. Many of the skills required for a successful performance on A-Levels or on the AP Essays are remarkably similar to those needed for University level written work. As a consequence it is wrong to argue they are of no relevance.

Standardized tests in all schools Standardized tests, when properly administered, provide a standard assessment of students' learned knowledge and determine whether or not students are prepared to move on to the next progressive level of schooling. If administered properly, this type of testing is a fair process that simply gauges student ability. In response to Con's claim that these tests are unfair, I would ask: What makes standardized tests unfair? I would like to also note that one personal experience is not sufficient evidence to judge the entire testing practice. Regarding Con's initial hypothetical that a student passes all of their classes, fails the test, and is held back: It is possible that a student could technically pass a class (via cheating, getting a D or C, extra credit) and not have achieved the appropriate level of knowledge. It's the same concept as taking notes. I could take notes for an hour, and then not remember a single thing, as it is all written on paper. I have the information in hand, but I have the responsibility to use it as well. Standardized tests are meant to be difficult. They are designed to test you, and you as the student have a responsibility to study for them if you want to perform well. Failing the standardized test is the result of a lack of preparedness, or the result of a failure to learn the proper information, either of which are the fault of the student, and in some cases, select teachers. If you pass your class, but don't learn anything, then what's the point? So in round two: I challenge Con to provide reasonable evidence that supports the claim that standardized testing is an unfair practice. I also challenge Con to disprove my argument that students can pass a class without really learning the material.

Standardized testing is a good thing (Hello and thank you for joining my debate)I will now pose my counterarguments for the following areas which you presented.ROUND 2: COUNTERARGUMENTS:(Rebuttal for "evaluation tools"): Many states have switched to the PARCC testing system which is digitally formated. I personally have taken the test and so have others that I met and so I speak by experience by saying this: not all the questions are the same because that would make cheating much easier, I asked about 100 kids in my grade and none of us had the same questions as anyone else. The questions on standardized testing are not meant to measure deep and creative thinking - they are to measure if you can understand a math problem or read a passage correctly and understand that. While deep thinking may be importaint for life - it is not a skill that you would aquire at any school you would go to. As I said before, many states upgrated their testing material to PARCC testing - so no cirriculum is really "out of date."(Rebuttal for "objective"): As you have said - tests that states have switched to like the PARCC are computer graded and are not biased. While the questions on the test are generated by humans - the people who make the test are certified to do so, and take it seriously, they have degrees and subjects like math and history - there is only one correct answer. While English open-responces are graded by humans - they have expirence and do not know the person who wrote the passage to mess around with their work or give them an unfair / or too fair or a score.(Rebuttal for "reliability"): What you explained in this section is exactly correct - but there is a reason why that is not an isssue. There are many schools who take the test multiple times a year (with different questions of course) and with roughly the same concepts included in the tests. This gives the school an accurate measure of what the pupil has learned / understands on average. There is a reason why these tests do not count as a grade - it is just to see a pretty accurate level of each child's enhancement.(Rebuttal for "differences"): I am not picking up on the poing you are trying to make?(Rebuttal for "bias"): That is simply untrue. Most tests are computerized at this point at the computer does the scorng. The computer can not possibly have a bias because it is a machiene. That is another reason why most tests are given electronically - so the computer can check for curse words or anything biased before it goes to a person for scoring (that is usually for only English portions). The tests that are given on paper - are mostly multiple choice. And if the student answers A and the correct answer is A, you cannot mark them wrong, because there is no biased for those questions because there is only one correct answer. The people who grade the paper - writting portions do not know the individual whom took the test for obvious reasons - as we have both agreed on. If there was no such thing as standardized testing - and the teacher was grading all the tests to see where a student/s were at, that would contain much more of a bias than standardized testing does because the teacher knows the kid and can be biased and twist answers around to be unfair - thankfully, that is not the case in this scenerio.(Rebuttal for "knowledge"): That is the point of standardized testing though - to see what a student understands and learns. It is to see if they are "actively making meaning out of what they are doing." That is the whole concept. The test covers the whole cirriculum that the student needs to know and understand - and that is all the "knowlegde" they need to know for the grade to pass. If a student does poorly in a certain area - there is a reason for it, that is the reason why we have these tests, so we can find these reasons and fix them. There is no other way around it unless you want to include a lot more bias.(Rebuttal for "achievement"): Where did you get this information from? That is an opinon of yours which you will need to cite for anyone to believe you.(Rebuttal for "teachers"): Did you read my first argument? A survey found that more teachers support standardized testing than don't with a vote of 2-1. That means that 66% of teachers support it 2/3 teachers.(Rebuttal for " stakes"): That is what I am trying to say - these tests are an accurate messure if a teacher is doing their job and if the students are learning the ciricculum they need to know (refrence back to my first argument for evidence on this portion of the argument.(Rebuttal for "high stakes"): There is no boost to be offered from standardized testing. It is only to see if Ex. a student will not struggle in an honors class or will understnad what they ar learning and comprehending all the material in the next grade. If a student is absent, they are rescheduled to take it another time - ther is no escaping it, it is mandatory. And it is not possible to push them out of school because they do not do well on a test - the test is to do the opposite of that.(Rebuttal for "ability"): Teachers have biased "which you wanted to avoid." This is documentation of student work over a period of time because the scores are saved. The tests are given to see where the student is at on a performance level. Finland actually does do standardized testing - they are the 1# country in the world for standardized testing and test really high on other non-standardized tests because of that.(Rebuttal for "racism"): There is no racism involved in scoring these tests because the people / machienes who score these tests do not know what race or culture these students come from - they do not even know the person in real life.I rest my case.

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to k-12 education in the U.S == Clarification ==The resolution states, "On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States."Let me clarify each of the terms. "On balance" means taking everything into consideration. In such a debate, all harms and benefits are weighed against each other to decide who wins. "Standardized testing" is a form of testing implemented at K-12 education in the United States, where the tests at the K-12 level are the same for all public schools. "Beneficial" means posing a net benefit.The burdens are shared. There's no burden of proof in this debate, only a burden of persuasion, due to the usage of "on balance" and "beneficial," both of which make it a debate of opinions rather than a fact-claim.== Rebuttal ==Pro's case is contradictory. The position of Pro is intended to argue for the resolution. Instead, Pro argues that standardized testing is bad. He's arguing from the wrong side. Pro is arguing that different students require different forms of education, and standardized testing actually fails in doing that. Pro's own source notes that standardized testing is ineffective in doing so. Vote Con right there. Pro's argument is contradictory to itself, and fails to affirm the resolution. Regardless, I'll presume I'm taking the position of Pro and address my opponent's harms:Pro's first harm is that children learn in different ways. But Pro's source, and argument, only address primary school children, which is irrelevant to the resolution. The resolution specifically regards K-12 education, and primary grade students don't link to the resolution. Furthermore, I agree that primary school children learn in different ways - but by K-12, they've all learned and prepared for this. The same set of educational portion would exist anyway, regardless of whether standardized testing exists. As such, the first harm doesn't apply.Pro says standardized testing has been linked to an "overemphasis" on vocational education. I have two responses: (1) overemphasis is subjective, and there's no objective reason to believe "critical thinking in mathematics" is more important than vocational education, and so forth and (2) I don't need to defend the status quo; as long as I can show some form of standardized testing is or would pose a net benefit, I affirm (therefore, you vote Con). This argument is also a bare assertion due to lack of sources. C1) Benefits to studentsPro concedes that testing -- in some form -- is beneficial. Testing allows parents and students to assess themselves. Such an assessment results in increase in total education for the student, and allows parents to stress on further improvement. Herbert J. Walberg (2011) says, “Students benefit directly when they take tests that offer information on how well they have mastered the material intended for learning. School reading and mathematics skills, for example, can be precisely specified, and as students learn the skills, they benefit from ongoing information tailored to their specific, individual progress. Computers streamline this process by providing immediate feedback about correct and incorrect responses far more quickly and with much greater patience than teachers and tutors can provide.” [1]On balance, standardized testing is a helpful form of testing to the student. John Bishop of Cornell University found that standardized testing poses huge educational value to the student. He found that countries requiring students to take nationally standardized tests showed higher test scores on international tests than those who took school-based tests. In another study, he found that US students who anticipated having to pass a standardized test learned more science and math, and were more likely to complete homework and talk with their parents about school work. [2, 3] C2) Teachers see benefit in standardized testsIt's largely agreed that standardized testing benefits teachers as well. According to Laura S. Hamilton and Brian Stecher, “[S]tandardized tests can do many things: tell policymakers and families how well students are doing overall; play a role in state and district accountability systems; contribute to teacher evaluations; and inform decision-making about student course placement. Some tests are used in other ways that include teachers adapting day-to-day instruction to meet individual student needs based on each student's test results.” [4] Teachers generally see standardized tests and associated accountability systems as beneficial. Teachers, therefore, do understand and perceive benefits. For all the above reasons, vote Con. [1] http://www.hoover.org...[2] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu...[3] http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu...[4] http://www.usnews.com...

Test This is not much of a debate - but I will state some of my personal beliefs on the negative effects of standardized testing. 1. No improvements - whatsoever.The stated goal of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 was "An act to close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind."No child left behind - but since it was passed, the US education system has been left behind. When this legislature was signed, the US ranked 18th in math. In 2009 - seven short years later - the US had fallen to number 31. A similar drop occurred in science; reading scores have not changed quite so much. I am arguing that if the stated goal of No Child Left Behind - the program the jump started standardized testing - is to do what it says, it has not succeeded. In the same way, kids aren't succeeding as a whole. And the US education system is not succeeding, much less meeting the standards set before our younger generation. The USA recently ranked "average" among other world leaders in comparison to test scores. The large implementation of standardized testing has proved to be a drawback to this nation. 2. What is meaningful? Standardized testing does not measure what makes education meaningful. Gerald W. Bracey, PhD, a late education researcher, once stated that such tests cannot measure, "creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, resourcefulness, sense of beauty, sense of wonder, honesty, integrity." These are really what kick-starts a student's interest in learning. Tests do not measure this. 3. Drill 'n kill. A five-year study by the University of Maryland found that, ""the pressure teachers were feeling to 'teach to the test'" since NCLB (No Child Left Behind) was leading to "declines in teaching higher-order thinking, in the amount of time spent on complex assignments, and in the actual amount of high cognitive content in the curriculum." This quality is important to me - that students get what they are learning, and understand it, instead of them remembering it for the tests and then forgetting it over summer break and the years to come. 4. Science, social studies, and the arts? A 2007 study done across the nation found that 44% of school districts were cutting time on subject areas such as science, social studies, and the arts by an average of 145 minutes per week. Why? To make time for reading and math - the majority of what makes up standardized tests. Science, social studies, and the arts should not be reduced in importance to students - even younger students. Science helps them understand the world around us. Social studies increases their understanding of the governments, cultures, and peoples of the world. The arts - art, music, etc. - can spark creativity in their young minds. Reading and math are important - but science, social studies, and the arts are subject areas that shouldn't be ignored. Testing encourages these subjects to be almost eradicated from the teachers' agendas. 5. Test preparation. Some schools spend a quarter of their time on test preparation - this wastes precious instruction time. After NYC schools' reading and math scores plunged in 2010, "many schools imposed extra measures to avoid being shut down, including daily two and a half hour prep sessions and test practice on vacation days." "On Sep. 11, 2002, students at Monterey High School in Lubbock, TX, were prevented from discussing the first anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks because they were too busy with standardized test preparation."Take some time, I say, to truly teach the subjects. Sure, some review is good. But when a large amount of instruction time is wasted on test preparation, I think the concept of standardized testing goes a bit too far. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I want to cite the website that I am getting my facts from - http://standardizedtests.procon.org...This website provides both sides of the argument on standardized testing; however, I believe that the cons outweigh the pros.

National testing will improve educational equality National testing helps narrow the achievement gap for minorities. It seeks to narrow class and racial gaps in school performance by creating common expectations and standards for all. It also often requires schools and districts to focus their attention on the academic achievement of traditionally under-served groups of children, such as low-income students, students with disabilities, and minorities. In the United States for example, the gap between Hispanic students and their white counterparts has not changed since the 1990s1. Whilst many previous government-created systems of accountability only measured average school performance, allowing schools to be highly rated even if they had large achievement gaps between white and Hispanic students, national testing has publicized these differences. As a result, the stated goal of the Obama Administration regarding education is 'to make the educational success of Latinos a priority. America's future depends on it'1. If they succeed in doing so, national testing should be thanked for its role in highlighting the problem. 1 Fuentes, J. (2011, July 10). Solve Hispanic education crisis. Retrieved July 12, 2011, from News Press: improve this

Standardized Testing is beneficial for students K-12 in America As my opponent forfeited the round, I conclude I have won.

A formal system needs to be in place. Guidelines are neither clear nor measurable. Students are duped into believing their innate abilities and potential are being tested whilst they are largely being tested on test-taking ability, confidence and pushiness. What this system encourages is practicing past papers in the hopes of mastering tests and not the subject. Tests do not encourage the pursuit of knowledge so much as the pursuit of great grades. Education should free the mind not restrict it to guidelines that are NOT transparent (As the pandemic of misunderstood Andagogy(opposite of pedagogy) keeps teachers from spoon-feeding or spelling things out). Intellectual exploration is impeded with constant pulls towards mastering guess work and memorising 'standard' methods of answering 'repeated types' of questions that were originally set to test a student's response to unfamiliar problems. Subjective/qualitative papers with essay questions are not as easy to measure as mathematics or other quantitative papers. There are times when different examiners grade the same paper by the same student/pupil very differently. Marks on tests are frequently altered on students' coercion or a teacher/examiner's admittance of human error on his/her part. Pushier/convincing students can push examiners/tutors into raising their grades and exercise this talent frequently. Tests simply require students to cram when studying, and after the test is taken, the information studied is almost immediately forgotten, so the purpose of the test in the first place is gone.

State Standardized Tests I shall rebut Con's criticisms of standardized tests. In so doing, I will provide reasons why standardized test are effectual via my rebuttals. Criticism 1: The tests are not necessary.Rebuttal 1: The tests are necessary. Test results provide a means by which to empirically compare students. Consider a quantitative comparison:“Student A understands 86% of the material; last year, he understood 80%. Student B understands 90% of the material; last year he understood only 65%. Student A has increased his comprehension by 6 percentage points; Student B has increased his understanding by 25 percentage points.” This analysis can guide teachers to help students who are most in need of help. This is better that a qualitative comparison: “Students A and B have improved.” Without a test, there's no way to know which students needs more help. Furthermore, empirical comparisons are useful in the rewarding of academic scholarships and college admission.Criticism 2: Standardized tests do not demonstrate (i.e. prove) anything. Rebuttal 2: Standardized tests demonstrate whether the test taker understands the material covered. In order to do well on an exam, the test taker must possess a sufficient level of understanding in order to pass the test. Otherwise, he will be unable to pass. Guessing is not sufficient. For example, say a student needs to answer at least 70% of the questions correctly on a test in order to pass. Say also that the particular test contains 50 questions, each of which is four-answer multiple choice. Finally, assume that the test contains no “stupid” answers that are obviously false. The probability of answering at least 70% correctly by chance is1 - sum [(50 choose n) * 0.25^n * 0.75^(50-n) from n=0 to n=34] = 0.00000000295194%In other words, it is impossible to do well by chance. The only way to do well is to deliberately select the correct answer. This can be done only if the test taker knows the correct answer. Thus, standardized tests demonstrate that the test taker possesses a sufficient level of understanding. Criticism 3: Creativity and imagination are more important than test-taking.Rebuttal 3: While creativity and imagination are important, it is equally important that students demonstrate an adequate understanding of academic subjects, even if no creativity and imagination are involved. Science and mathematics, for example, are not based upon creativity and imagination. Rather, these fields are based upon a rigorous, procedural application of reason and observation. The only way to check whether a student understands these vital subjects is to ask a relevant question and check to see whether the answer is correct.Creativity is still important. Often, the solution to a mathematical of scientific problem requires creative application of mastered material.Criticism 4: Tests have produced zombies.Rebuttal 4: This is demonstrably false. Some of the most productive, creative members of society are ones who have done well on standardized tests. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, average SAT score between 2090-2340, has produced 24 winners of the Nobel Prize, 44 Rhodes Scholars, 55 Marshall Scholars, and Ben Bernanke. Over 33% of astronauts are alumni of MIT. If MIT were a country, because of its entrepreneurs, the university would rank as the 11th largest in the world by GDP, ahead of Canada, Australia, and South Korea.And that's just one high score school. Schools such as Yale and Harvard and Princeton and Cambridge and Oxford have produced countless scientists, politicians, and artists. These schools all require high performance on standardized tests, yet have not produced zombies. ---Miscellaneous point: A mention of a 19th century Harvard professor.Response: Irrelevant. First, there's no source. Second, so what if some guy said something? If he was right, he was right.--- References:1. Binomial distribution2. http://en.wikipedia.org...3. http://en.wikipedia.org...4. http://www.imf.org...=

On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States First, off, I would like to say that West Coast Starter File does not personally interview people. They take sources from other websites and creates a package to help debaters. Saying I plagiarized from West Coast is false, because they have not provided a link themselves. We provided the source they have given us, making our argument valid. Contention 1 A: Having teachers prepare students for the test causes teaching to the test. This changes the curriculum, not allowing students to learn other things, such as fine arts. When you say that what is on the test is what the students need in life is not always true, as some students are not as interested in math or language arts as others. Contention 1 B: Here is the link I posted ORIGINALLY: "How Standardized Testing Damages Education (Updated July 2012). " FairTest. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, 28 Aug. 2007. Web. 03 Nov. 2015. . http://fairtest.org... Also, I am not saying that poorer students will not be able to do well. What I am trying to say is that it is easier for whites, middle, and upper background students to do well, because they have access to better education. It is harder for someone to do well on a test if they do not have to money to buy materials to help them study. However, other students who are richer will be able to afford these books and will therefore have a better chance of doing well. You defined standardized testing as followed: A type of test that has the same questions for every student, depending on age and grade level. It is scored in a manner which allows the results of students to be compared. This means that all students, even the disabled or language learners, will have to take the same test. Colleges will look at these tests, and may not know that these students are disabled or have just moved to the United States. Therefore, the disabled and language learners are not always given an equal chance for success. Contention 2 A- As I stated in my quote, different schools will have different curriculums, and trying to create ONE test to fit for all of these different settings makes it nearly impossible to compare scores. You stated that schools will teach the same thing, but as I stated before, this is generally not true with different teachers and different styles of teaching. Contention 2 B-As my Contention 2A said, different school have different curriculums and even if teachers did teach to the test, which I have already proven to be bad, it would limit the curriculum and students will be worse off if they wanted to learn things other than language arts, math, and science. Contention 3 A-The teachers actually do NOT decide what to teach the students. There is always a guidebook for what to teach at a certain time. These teachers must follow these guidebooks but can teach it their own way. It is not always true that teachers teach what is on the test. As I said in my Contention 2, different school have different curriculums, so making a test to fit all of these different schools is impossible. Contention 3 B- My opponent stated that activities such as art are still required for the student program. However, before, they said that it is good that these activities are taken out because they are not part of standardized tests. But students who wish to take these classes are not given the chance because standardized testing has already squeezed out these activities. Thank you.

Standardized Testing is beneficial for students K-12 in America I believe that Standardized Testing is not beneficial for students K-12 in America. Standardized testing is not beneficial to students. All it does is take away from class time and cause unnecessary stress. Standardized testing does not affect student's grades grades. All it does is provide the state with how much students at different schools are learning. I think that this is an ineffective way of calculating a school's efficiency. The state should look at students' overall grades instead of forcing them to take a long test where their focus is usually lost within the first half hour. Students don't especially care about how well they do on the test, because it won't affect their overall grade. Therefore, a solution would be to (as I said before) use the students' overall grades to calculate data, or make the standardized tests part of their overall grade. Also, it usually takes around a week to take the tests. This time could be spent learning.

Standardized testing accuaretly represents a student's academic ability. I agree with what is said earlier..............

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States Extend all; no response needed beyond that.

Education: Testing What people do not understand is that standardized testing is a waste of time due to the fact that the information on these tests are not relevant to the school curriculum and do not help the students in their life beyond high school whatsoever. Excessive testing may teach children to be good at taking tests, but does not prepare them for productive adult lives. China displaced Finland at the top of the 2009 PISA rankings because, as explained by Jiang Xueqin, Deputy Principal of Peking University High School, "Chinese schools are very good at preparing their students for standardized tests. For that reason, they fail to prepare them for higher education and the knowledge economy."China is trying to depart from the "drill and kill" test prep that Chinese educators admit has produced only "competent mediocrity"" (1). Not only are these tests incompetent, they also create extra and unwanted stress on these children. Standardized testing causes severe stress in younger students. According to education researcher Gregory J. Cizek, anecdotes abound "illustrating how testing... produces gripping anxiety in even the brightest students, and makes young children vomit or cry, or both." On Mar. 14, 2002, the Sacramento Bee reported that "test-related jitters, especially among young students, are so common that the Stanford-9 exam comes with instructions on what to do with a test booklet in case a student vomits on it" (2) Students do not need these tests, the stress that comes along with it, nor do they benefit the students in the least. Overall, standardized testing is not important to a students learning curriculum and should be taken away.

It is impossible, in large countries, to have a national curriculum that teaches all the relevant information and sets a fair common standard POINT The idea of national testing may seem like a good idea until you start to actually try to agree the standa Developing acceptable national standards is not easy, but other countries have demonstrated that creating a good standard of tests that inspire students and teachers is possible. Excellence is created by bringing together the right people, examining textbooks, and looking at standards already put in place by many national teachers' associations. In the United States, the quality of education that students receive previously depended on what state, county, and town they live in. This broke the principle of equality that is a key part of the values of the country. If all teachers are aware of the expected standards their students should be attaining, the quality of education for all children can go up. improve this

Standardized tests result in teachers “teaching the test” The importance attached to such tests leads to teachers actively “teaching the test.” The result is that many teachers, rather than instilling useful skills or providing a balanced curriculum, end up trying to focus on things that occur on given tests. While this is not a huge problem with the SAT itself, it is a serious problem with subject tests like the SAT 2s, AP Exams, and the British A-Levels. This undermines the provision of education in the country.

Standardized testing is a good thing I would first like to state that I feel the issues that plague schools stem from viruses that pollute society in general. In my opinion, these issues cannot be tackled in schools until they are honestly confronted and addressed in society. However, for the purpose of this debate I will attempt to couch an international dynamic within a scholastic paradigm. The issues I allude to include classism, poverty, racism and many other concerns and controversies that are relevant to the effectiveness of standardized testing. I will refer to these topics as they relate to standardized testing during the debate. As I stated in the comments section, standardized testing would be more accurate if schools were standardized. As it stands, schools are basically still separate and unequal. Meaning, many underprivileged schools are expected to achieve the same results as fully funded, avant-garde schools. Can this be done? Yes, on occassion. Should this be expected? No. "As of 2011 48 percent of all public school students were poor* and this year, students of color will account for the majority of public school students for the first time in US history. .. What is surprising about these shifts is that they are not leading to more diverse schools. In fact, the Civil Rights Project has shown that black students are just as segregated today as they were in the late 1960s, when serious enforcement of desegregation plans first began following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. " [1] While it is clear that diversity provides a more enriching scholastic experience, I would like to make it clear that segregation is not the major problem. The main problem is that schools that house underprivileged and/or melaninated children are not provided with the same level of finances, support or resources as schools that house privileged or affluent students. True education should employ more of a nurturing what's within than an instilling from without concept. When I see or hear debates regarding what's best for students the one variable that is usually missing is input from the student's themselves. Standardized testing is not an accurate method of assessing a student's true grasp of the purpose, relevance or potential of the information they have processed. With so much attention paid to teaching to the test, students often receive little to no knowledge of how to apply the information dealt with in the tests in a real world setting. What's Wrong With Standardized Tests? Are standardized tests fair and helpful evaluation tools? Not really. On standardized exams, all test takers answer the same questions under the same conditions, usually in multiple-choice format. Such tests reward quick answers to superficial questions. They do not measure the ability to think deeply or creatively in any field. Their use encourages a narrowed curriculum, outdated methods of instruction, and harmful practices such as grade retention and tracking. Are standardized tests objective? The only objective part of most standardized tests is scoring, when done by an accurately programmed machine. Deciding what items to include on the test, how questions are worded, which answers are scored as "correct,” how the test is administered, and the uses of exam results are all made by subjective human beings. Are test scores "reliable"? A test is completely reliable if you would get exactly the same results the second time you administered it. All tests have "measurement error. " This means an individual's score may vary significantly from day to day due to testing conditions or the test-taker's mental or emotional state. Scores of young children and scores on sub-sections of tests are particularly unreliable. Do test scores reflect significant differences among people? Not necessarily. The goal of most tests is to sort and rank. To do that, test makers make small differences appear large. Questions most people get right or wrong are removed because they don’t help with ranking. Because of measurement error, two people with very different scores on one exam administration might get similar scores on a retest, or vice versa. On the SAT, for example, two students' scores must differ by at least 144 points (out of 1,600) before the test’s sponsors are willing to say the students' measured abilities really differ. Don't test-makers remove bias from tests? Most test-makers review items for obvious biases, such as offensive words. But many forms of bias are not superficial. Test-makers also use statistical bias-reduction techniques. However, these cannot detect underlying bias in the test's form or content. As a result, biased cultural assumptions built into the test as a whole often are not removed by test-makers. Do tests reflect current knowledge about how students learn? Not at all. While our understanding of the brain and how people learn and think has progressed enormously, standardized tests have remained the same. Test makers still assume that knowledge can be broken into separate bits and that people learn by absorbing these individual parts. Today, cognitive and developmental psychologists understand that knowledge is not separable bits and that people (including children) learn by connecting what they already know with what they are trying to learn. If they cannot actively make meaning out of what they are doing, they do not learn or remember. Do multiple-choice or short-answer tests measure important student achievement? These kinds of tests are very poor yardsticks of student learning. They are weak measures of the ability to comprehend complex material, write, apply math, understand scientific methods or reasoning, or grasp social science concepts. Nor do they adequately measure thinking skills or assess what people can do on real-world tasks. Are test scores helpful to teachers? Classroom surveys show most teachers do not find scores from standardized tests scores very useful. The tests do not help a teacher understand what to do next in working with a student because they do not indicate how the student learns or thinks. Nor do they measure much of what students should learn. Good evaluation provides useful information to teachers. How has “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) affected the use of standardized tests in the U. S. ?NCLB has led to a huge increase in testing. It requires state testing of every student in grades 3-8 and once in high school, more than twice previous federal mandates. NCLB also led to an explosion of other standardized exams, including “benchmark” tests often administered 3-10 times per year. U. S. students are now the most tested on Earth. What is high-stakes testing? High-stakes tests are used to make important decisions such as student promotion or graduation, granting teacher tenure, or sanctioning schools for poor performance. Twenty-six states now have graduation tests; some states and districts have tests for grade promotion. NCLB attaches sanctions to test results. Even though NCLB has failed to improve schools, policy makers continue to expand high-stakes test uses such as “value-added” teacher evaluation. What happens when tests become high stakes? High-stakes testing often results in a narrow focus on teaching just the tested material (test preparation). Other content in that subject as well as untested subjects such as social studies, art and music are cut back or eliminated. High-stakes testing also produces score inflation: scores go up, but students have not learned more. Their scores are lower even on a different standardized test. This undermines the meaning of test results as well as education. What are other consequences of high-stakes testing? Attaching high stakes to test results increases cheating and other efforts to boost scores without improving educational quality. This can be done by arranging for low-scoring students to be absent on test day or pushing them out of school, often into the prison pipeline. Are there better ways to evaluate student achievement or ability? Yes. Good teacher observation, documentation of student work, and performance-based assessment, all of which involve the direct evaluation of real learning tasks, provide useful material for teachers, parents, and the public. Many nations that do the best in international comparisons, like Finland, use these techniques instead of large-scale standardized testing. [2] Racial bias in standardized testingWhat many people do not know is that the use of standardized tests has its origins in the Eugenics movement, where basic tenets assert that certain races are inferior to others biologically and intellectually. From our 21st century perspective, we can look back in horror, but we have to be clear about the original purpose of standardized tests. The original IQ tests were designed by French psychologist Alfred Binet for benign and limited uses: a) on young children who were not developing “normally”; b) as “general” tools to make “general” decisions, not a precise measurement for precise decisions; and c) to signal when a child needed more help in their intellectual development. Unfortunately in the United States, IQ scores were posited to be fixed and innate, and were promptly used to rank and sort individuals by race and ethnic background. Businesses, government agencies and educational institutions used IQ tests to justify placing certain people into certain jobs and excluding them from others…. [3]This, it is my assertion that standardized testing is not a good thing if the goal is to produce a well rounded student with skills that will make them productive, industrious and independent in a post academic setting. I await a response from my opponent. . http://www.urban.org... [1]. http://www.fairtest.org... [2]. http://parentsacrossamerica.org... [3]

Standardized Tests NO! I don't know where you went or go to school, but school's do not make the effort to appease ALL of their students. They only make the effort to appease their stupid students because they are the one's that will drop standardized test scores and make them look bad. In my elementary school, middle school, and even about half of my high school, upper level students never got any benefits other than a rare gifted class. Even then, that would just be one class per day. In all the other classes, I always had to deal with the stupid kids asking questions and the teachers being forced to answer them all the while holding me back. It is not, "No child left behind". It is "No child gets ahead". In conclusion, I support the abolition of standards because it forces people be held back who does not need to be.

Education: Testing Although the test grades would vary, it is unjust that all the states take different tests, making the comparison of the whole country unreliable and inconsistent. Each state develops its own NCLB standards and assessments, providing no basis for meaningful comparison. "A student sitting for the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) is asked a completely different set of questions from a child in California taking the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) test, and while the former includes essay questions, the latter is entirely multiple-choice" (1). All students should take the same test, only different levels of intelligence should be taken into consideration to test the level of education of a certain child. Standardized tests are also an imprecise measure of teacher performance, yet they are used to reward and punish teachers for the results of their students scores. "According to a September 2010 report by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, over 17% of Houston teachers ranked in the top category on the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills reading test were ranked among the two lowest categories on the equivalent Stanford Achievement Test. The results were based on the same students, tested in the same subject, at approximately the same time of year, using two different tests" (2). The method of judging a teacher by the scores of these students are not an effective way to do so, making the tests an unimportant task.

High school students in the US ought to be required to pass standardized exit exams to graduate While I think it is unfortunate that some teachers ony "teach" for the test, that doesn't mean the test is faulty.......it means the teacher is. Standardized tests are great because if you take human scoring out of the question the results are easy to assess and document. However, if a test has essay questions or something other than multiple choice or true/false answering you have to have humans score the results. If computer scoring is used the results are very clear. These tests are also economical to make, give and score. Another advantage is that while scoring of the individual may not be completely perfect ,it does give a good indicator of the school or class average. This helps school administrators know better what is working and what isn't within their curriculum framework. You say in your argument that "students from across the United States are all taught different subject matters and skills." My point is that there should be BASICS that are enforced and proficiency in them realized before graduation. The idea of standardized testing is to remove subjective factors from assessment. As a result, standardized tests provide several advantages to admissions committees and others who need to evaluate and compare the people who take these tests. You say that standardized tests are not important in the college admission process. I beg to differ. The SATs and ACTs are not optional for universities. There is a range that they expect. Excellent grades and poor scores will not secure admission. I am not stating that great standardized test scores and poor grades will.The standardization of these tests ensures that test-takers are being measured objectively on the same material. The grading is standardized, so test scores are the same no matter who or what is scoring them. This removes any bias that might stem from the scorer. On the other hand, tests that use subjective grading might yield scores that vary widely depending on who is scoring them. Standardized tests supposedly predict how well students will perform in the schools to which they're applying. For instance, the MCAT is designed to test the skills necessary to perform well in medical school. While a good MCAT score doesn't necessarily guarantee a successful medical school experience, studies have shown that standardized tests predict success more accurately than more subjective assessments, such as interviews. In fact, interviews have been shown to have only as much accuracy as chance in predicting a student's success at a particular school. Another advantage of standardized testing is that the results can be generalized and repeated, which shows a degree of validity and reliability. An additional benefit stems from aggregation, which provides a more accurate assessment of a particular group's skills and knowledge. One individual test-taker's score may not indicate how well the test measures the body of knowledge it's designed for. However, enough people take these tests so that their aggregate scores can provide useful information, because the percentage of assessment error decreases as the sample size increases. While many people criticize standardized tests as creating a bias along a number of factors, the tests nonetheless provide a more standardized tool in comparing test-takers than many other elements that admissions committees consider when evaluating applicants.

Resolved on balance I apologized for not making my style of debating clear from the beginning. I first present evidence to support the agrument I'm making, then I later make analytical arguments at the end. I see how this may have been confusing. BUT this doesn't mean my argument is false, that would be a "fallacy fallacy" (). And saying you don't need to present any further arguments just shows how week your argument is the first place. Now my plan for Round three is to present two pieces of evidence (I only put in the parts I thought nessary in order to save time reading) and then move on to analytical arguments to directly address your arguments. Argument 1. Why we don"t need standardized testing http://www.edweek.org... There are two main arguments against using standardized tests to guarantee that students reach at least a basic level of academic competency. The first is radical: These tests are not necessary. The second"less radical and more familiar"is that, even if standardized testing were an efficient benchmark of basic skills, the costs associated with it are too high. Standardized tests are unnecessary because they rarely show what we don't already know. Ask any teacher and they can tell you which students can read and write. That telling usually comes in the form of letter grades or evaluations that break down progress on skills. So trust the teacher. Publish grade distributions. Locally publish a compilation of evaluation reports. Release a state or national report reviewed and verified by expert evaluators with legislative oversight. People will say: "That's crazy! Schools will fudge results. Grade data means nothing because teachers apply different standards with different values. Let's give them all one reliable test. And won't this proposal create a whole new bureaucracy?" All true (except for the one test being reliable). Given high stakes and the accompanying pressure, people will game a system. And it is all too true that grades vary widely because of four factors: a teacher's conception of achievement, a teacher's sense of equity and rigor, a teacher's ability, and the composition of students. But people are already gaming standardized testing, sometimes criminally. And, at a basic level of competency, a grade or an evaluative report would give us as much information as we now get from standardized tests. We have the grade problem at my high school. In the same course or department, a B in one classroom might be an A, or even a C, in another. It's a problem for us, and, likely, a problem in most schools. "To sum up, we don"t learn much from standardized accountability, and we have lost a great deal by giving it so much prominence." Arguement 2. Standardized Testing Undermines Teaching http://www.npr.org... No Child Left Behind has turned into a timetable for the destruction of American public education," she tellsFresh Air's Terry Gross. "I had never imagined that the test would someday be turned into a blunt instrument to close schools " or to say whether teachers are good teachers or not " because I always knew children's test scores are far more complicated than the way they're being received today." No Child Left Behind required schools to administer yearly state standardized tests. Student progress on those tests was measured to see if the schools met their Adequate Yearly Progress goals. or AYP. Schools missing those goals for several years in a row could be restructured, replaced or shut down. "The whole purpose of federal law and state law should be to help schools improve, not to come in and close them down and say, 'We're going to start with a clean slate,' because there's no guarantee that the clean slate's going to be better than the old slate," says Ravitch. "Most of the schools that will be closed are in poor or minority communities where large numbers of children are very poor and large numbers of children don't speak English. Schools undercut the opportunities for public schools, making public school students feel like "second-class citizens.It's simply a way of avoiding the public responsibility to provide good education." Analytical arguments: 1. C1. by taking tests the students don't see how much they know just how much they can memorize right before taking a test; the information doesn't stick they can cram information the night before and then forget it all in a week. The purpose of education is to learn information and then use it later in the world and tests undermine that. -also standardized test don't tell the student anything they don't already know. Most students are already well aware if whether they know something or not; even if they didn't they have grades which provide more information than any test as it consists of more studies. 2. C2. we can make the term standardized tests broad enough so it covers all forms of tests. But most of the issues lie in the tests which do occur once a year as they hold the biggest impact on the students future. 3. C3. Just because a student does well on a test doesn't mean he or she know the information. Most student's don't consistently study, rather they cram all the information the night before, students who do study are much more likely to experience a block than students who cram info. (http://www.galamind.com...) -also there are, as we know today, three types of learners, tactile, audio and visual. and test only favor visual. Conclusion: Due to the lack of the pros arguments I uphold my belief to that standardized testing is NOT beneficial to k-12 education in the United States, and I urge the affirmation of the resolution.

The National Curriculum measures standards. Parents and policy-makers can use the data from national measurements to provide frameworks for improvement strategies. Standardisation offers targets against which poorer-performing schools can set themselves.

Standardized Testing Standardized testing should continue to exist in schools. 1. It prepares students for future jobs: To land many jobs and be able to apply, (ie. lawyers, pilots etc.) standardized tests need to be taken to get such jobs. Teaching students from an early age how to handle them will help them for the future. 2. It is a non-discriminatory and fair way of testing: No racism, sexism etc. can be found with grading these kinds of tests because most of them are multiple choice and for the written sections, the graders do not know the students whom are being graded. This avoids bias and overall makes testing more fair for students to measure academic knowledge. 3. "Teaching to the test" may not be a bad thing: You may make the argument that teachers "teach to the test" and ignore crucial concepts just to cover all the test material in time. This is false, for all teachers do not know what is on such tests to prepare their students for them. They just follow the core curriculum. It helps teachers and students "focus on essential content," and "eliminates time wasting activities which prevent students from excelling." 4. It does not "narrow" curriculum: It simply just focuses on more essential topics to succeed. 5. Most parents approve of these tests: "A June-July 2013 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 75% of parents say standardized tests "are a solid measure of their children's abilities" and 69% say the tests "are a good measure of the schools' quality." 93% of parents say standardized tests "should be used to identify areas where students need extra help" and 61% say their children "take an appropriate number of standardized tests." ~This quote is self-explanatory. 6. Most students approve, and are not "overly-stressed:" Most students have a positive view towards such testing. And approximately 75% of students support the test and believe it is fair, according to a 2006 country-wide survey. 7. Non-expensive: It only costs $2-5 per student, which is a small amount compared to buying other materials for schools. ie. textbooks, computers etc. Taxes pay for this for public schools. 8. Most teachers and administrators approve of such tests: 9. Unbiased grading: Once again, since the teacher of the students are not grading the tests, bias is removed. 10. It prepares students for the future: Not only jobs, it challenges students to comply with more demanding college work. Sources: http://standardizedtests.procon.org...

Education: Testing I strongly disagree with the fact that standardized testing are discriminatory against students who, for example, are unable to speak English well. In fact, "Standardized tests are inclusive and non-discriminatory because they ensure content is equivalent for all students. Former Washington, DC, schools chancellor Michelle Rhee argues that using alternate tests for minorities or exempting children with disabilities would be unfair to those students: "You can't separate them, and to try to do so creates two, unequal systems, one with accountability and one without it. This is a civil rights issue"" (2). In continuation, the United States is not the only nation using standardized testing: "20 countries studied "have achieved significant, sustained, and widespread gains" on national and international assessments had used "proficiency targets for each school" and "frequent, standardized testing to monitor system progress," according to a Nov. 2010 report by McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm" (2). Standardized testing is not only an efficient way to measure school progress, but it is also a common way.

Re-entrenches disadvantage Standardised exams like the SAT hit minorities badly when they don't need it. For example African Americans amongst other minorities suffer. A glaring statistic from an analysis conducted in 1998 shows that "October 1998 SAT showed that out of 78 Verbal and 60 Math questions, there were no items on which African Americans or Chicanos outperformed Whites."[[Fair Test "10 Myths about the SATThe National Centre For Open and Fair Testing Accessed 28.08.09 "http://www.fairtest.org/10-myths-about-sat]] There is also a big gender bias too in certain tests like the SAT. Because it is a "fast-paced, multiple-choice test.. [it]rewards strategic guessing -- a non-academic skill at which males tend to excel" [[ Fair Test "10 Myths about the SAT" The National Centre For Open and Fair Testing Accessed 28.08.09 http://www.fairtest.org/10-myths-about-sat ]]

Resolved: Standardized test scores accurately reflect the academic value of students. Let's Continue 1. If a student is well aware of the subject being tested upon and has 3 or 4 different versions of the test, then there should be no reason for him or her to have inconsistent scores. It makes no sense and in response to the quote you used, "The National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences issued a report in 1999 from its Board on Testing and Assessment. The report found that educational tests generally do provide dependable and valuable information about student achievement". The tests are significant in providing information on how the student is doing and what material he or she has mastered. 2. The argument for this debate is that "Standardized test scores accurately reflect the academic value of students", now if a student gets a question wrong that does not mean the test is inaccurate it just means the student doesn't know the material. If a student guesses a question and gets it right, what's the chance that he will do that for the entire test. Hence, Standardized test scores are completely reliable in determining where a child stands in terms of academics. 3. Standardized test scores are accurate because it determines how much a child knows on their own. Students are given enough time to overcome pressure and complete their exam. If a student is under pressure for an exam, how will he or she feel when its time to move on to college and the work field where fear of pressure is not an excuse. 4. Standardized test scores do reflect how much a child knows and where he or she should be helped. It helps teachers to determine how effectively they are teaching and where they need to focus a bit more on. The Great Schools staff states, "Most experts agree that the best tests are ones that measure what students know in relation to what they are supposed to have learned. These tests are called "criterion referenced" or "standards based. " Tests like these, especially when they include writing or problem solving, are useful for both teachers and parents to make sure students are on track for their grade level. " This quote backs up the fact that Standardized test scores accurately reflect where a child stands in terms of academic values.

Education: Testing The fact that these tests are all the same difficulty is not fair to the students with slower learning habits and the varying strengths of these students are based off of the lack of regular curriculum in these schools. "A national 2007 study by the Center on Education Policy reported that since 2001, 44% of school districts had reduced the time spent on science, social studies and the arts by an average of 145 minutes per week in order to focus on reading and math. A 2007 survey of 1,250 civics, government, and social studies teachers showed that 75% of those teaching current events less often cited standardized tests as the reason" (1). Because most of the attention of the students is directed towards standardized test information, the children are not learning the basic information. Not only do the students learn nothing from these tests, the government is not benefiting from it either, the billion dollar testing industry is notorious for making costly and time-consuming scoring errors. "NCS Pearson, which has a $254 million contract to administer Florida's Comprehensive Assessment Test, delivered the 2010 results more than a month late and their accuracy was challenged by over half the state's superintendents. After errors and distribution problems in 2004-2005, Hawaii replaced test publisher Harcourt with American Institutes for Research, but the latter had to re-grade 98,000 tests after students received scores for submitting blank test booklets" (2). Overall, it seems as though no one strongly benefits from these tests, all together making them unimportant.

School Testing Standardized testing costs 1.7 billion per year, this would save taxpayers a lot of money ending the madness. These tests are unreliable when measuring a student's performance. In 2011, a study found that testing does not improve student achievement. The United States has dropped in Math, Reading, and Science. The testing only measures a small portion of education. Teachers are in classes teaching a test as opposed to teaching from a book. This is only hurting education, the teachers and students should not be held accountable for poor test grades. Not all students test the same, some students test poorly, but at the same time know more than they are showing on the test. These tests do not bring a positive learning environment for the student or for the teacher, both of which are stressed. The student is stressed fearing they may not pass and can not move up to the next grade. The teacher may lose their job if some of the students do not pass this test. Testing is good to see what level students are at and what the school or teacher need to work on, but it should not be a deciding factor on anything. http://www.nap.edu... http://www.science20.com...

Standardized testing should remain in our schools. Alright, wrap up. Standardized testing fails at assessing every one's knowledge to full extend due to the lack of open answer questions, which has been proven to be the ideal way to asses knowledge.Standardized testing favors and rewards proficient students (scholarships when you get a perfect SAT score) and discriminates and punishes students under proficiency (getting put into special ed programs, not getting into colleges that they wish to attend).Standardized testing is riducously expensive (http://www.huffingtonpost.com...), and that money could go towards much better programs that actually improve the education provided in schools. So my question to you is, if it is proven not to truly asses a students knowledge, if it barres lower scoring students from succeeding in life, and if it cost an absolute absurd amount of money every year, money that could be better spend on other projects, why do we still have standardized tests?(Good luck on your debate, good idea of doing this on here before you have the real debate, that way you can really see your opponents viewpoint and main arguments, and you can fine tune your own argument. I will see you around!)

Competition in education leads to improvement in the quality of students and enhances their performance. Moreover, it helps evolve superior teachers, teaching methodologies and educational institutions. Reiteration. On the whole competition ensures that students display the best of their abilities using whatever resources they can. Whether these resources are unfairly distributed or are inherently diabolical is irrelevant because the object of competition is to reveal what students students can do in the exam room that is conditioned the same way for all students taking the examination. If the examination occurs now; the point of the examination is to determine where the student stands now and not how s/he got there. Examiners are interested in what the students know and share within the examination room and at the time of the examination. Competition forces those with a comparable paucity in resources to work harder than their better-equipped contemporaries. And there have been considerable cases in which those from broken homes performed better than those from aristocratic ones.

Competition improves the overall quality of education. Measuring teachers' performances will create a transparent market for teaching talent. Underperforming teachers will be selected out because they are less in demand, unless they adapt and learn from what their competitors apparently do better. So, the overall quality of the teacher pool will rise and this will increase the quality of education for all students.

Standardized testing is a good thing ROUND 3 - FINAL COUNTERARGUMENTS: (Thanks for your responces)(Rebuttal for "removing students"): The "No Child Left Behind" law actually helps kids stay in school and be able to keep up with the others.(Rebuttal for "item selection"): I do not think that they were signaling anyone spasifically out - I think that they were trying to make things easier to compare then beforehand for races, ethnicity etc.(Rebuttal for "Racism"): But that is not racist - they were talking historically how the British culture effected the African culture.(Rebuttal for " economic bias"): I do not see a problem with that? What - we will just allow white people to be examples on test questions? That is more racist than actually allowing them in a test. What does tennis have to do with racism? Please explain that further.(Rebuttal for "cultures"): She was reviewing the Iowa skills test which is located in the United States, and follows the US culture. She was Latina you meantioned - if you would just look at the SAT questions for people in her native country, that will more likely fit her culture.(Rebuttal for "knowledge accuracy"): That is exactly why we have these tests in the first place - to see everyone's level and compare it to where they should be (reffering to the material on the test).(Rebuttal for "Teacher support"): I cited my evidence on this as well - a study found that more teachers support standardized testing with a vote of 2-1. Yes, it depends on the teacher, and yes, more teachers support it then those who don't.(Rebuttal for "stakes"): Because it does not matter the amount of kids the teacher has - you see, it all matters how they teacher teaches them. The number of students is irrelivent. (Rebuttal for "High stakes"): Do you have proof that these students who are "expected" to preform poorly on the tests are suspended? What score does the school need to "estimate" that they make? You see, that is a very broad assumption.(Rebuttal for "Ability"): But they still do use them - you want to get rid of the testing alltogether. You keep explaining how that country is so successful - and standardized testing (even at a secondary level) is contributing to that excelence.(Rebuttal for "Finland"): You keep using this country as an example. But Finland is a VERY VERY small country and is easier to fund and control their school districts for educational purposes. I believe we are talking about the USA banning these tests - and as we all know, the USA is one of the biggest countries in the world. And with more land to control - it faces more challenges and dissagreements for education. You cannot compare Finland's success to the USA's because the land size is much different and it is simply not possible for the USA to preform exactly like those other countries you have brought up in your previous arguments.(Rebuttal for "Racism"): It is not possible to make those test questions rasict unless there is clearly a slang or vulgur term. The previous examples which you mentioned are not racist (if they are, please explain further). And yes, there will be some racism because not every person who makes up these tests is going to be truthful about what they put on it. But the questions have to pass multiple sets of people before it offically goes on a test - and one of those people is bound to object (probobly more) which does not make racism a real issue. There is probobly even more racism going on in classrooms themselves then on these tests.(Rebuttal for "quality education"): Of course it is! That is the reason why we have these tests - so we can see where all the students are preforming at an academic level. And if they are NOT preforming up to par (as they should be) then the school can provide additional (needed) aid to the students that need it - and teach them a different way if they have to so that they understand it. This is the only way to compare preformance to the common core standards.I rest my case on this debate.(I want to thank my opponent for joining this debate. He stuck to his point and had really strong arguments. I want to additionally thank him for being serious throughout the debate to get the full benefit from the discourse on such a controversial topic. I had fun debating this topic with you and I am looking forward to your final argument and responces.)

No Child Left Behind Act Standardized testing sets useful baseline achievement standards.

The National Curriculum provides reference points of achievement for parents and government. The Blair/Brown government is obsessed with targets, though their effectiveness seems marginal to say the least. The national curriculum does not effectively measure achievement in either students or teachers. Especially under a national curriculum that uses merit based pay. Using standardized tests encourages "teaching to the test" (teachers giving only the information that is required to pass the test). Now all our students are do is MEMORIZE and REGURGITATE information... as opposed to actually UNDERSTANDING the material (so as to be able to apply what they have learned). Overall standardized tests are ineffective at providing the information you argue that our policy makers need, because the results are often artificial.

Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to k-12 education in the U.S That's disappointing. When I accepted this, I thought I'd get a good debate on a topic with equal ground that I don't know anything about. I researched and did gain some information, and I was going to tell the judges to ignore the Con/Pro confusion if my opponent continued their argument. When I accepted, I didn't intend things like a "noob snipe," because I didn't realize my opponent was new to the site. Anyhow, here's why you should vote Con: (1) Pro confuses the sides in arguing for a resolution. Pro argues *against* the resolution, which means every single argument of Pro's is turned against them. The turn means you vote Pro down since Pro doesn't fulfill their share of the burden. (2) Pro doesn't prove any of their points -- the "overemphasis on vocational education" point was a bare assertion and was insufficiently explained, in that there's no reason to think that's a net harm; Pro's source for their first contention and argument only concern primary school children, which is irrelevant to K-12 education. I've constructed a case with clear reasons to vote Con, even presuming I'm taking the "for" position. First, standardized testing has clear benefit to students, since it makes it more likely for them to show interest in studies, to complete their homework, and to interact with parents about school work, and the feedback given as a result is much more effective than personal feedback. Second, there's benefit to teachers, since it reduces their workload, benefit them via accountability systems, contribute to teacher evaluations, and tell teachers how to deal with different students in different ways (which also link turns my opponent's first contention).