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Aubrey Reece

Professor White

ENG 1201

15 Apr 2018

Teach to the Test; Forget the Rest

“Sometimes the most brilliant and

intelligent minds do not shine in

standardized tests because they do not have

standardized minds.” – Diane Ravitch

You may be asking yourself: what is

standardized testing? Well, by the end of

THIS PICTURE IS A PRIME EXAMPLE TO THE this paper, I will have answered that
FACT THAT TEACHERS MUST TEACH TO
THE TEST AND ONLY THE TEST.
question. I will have pointed out all its flaws

and discredited all the so called “benefits” it has to offer. Standardized testing is biased,

inaccurate, unbeneficial and causes a lot of controversy in the educational field to both teachers

and students.

First things first, what exactly is this type of testing and where does it originate from?

Standardized testing is conducted to teach students in a customary way. The questions on

standardized tests are constructed and scored in a preordained, standard manner so that the

scoring is consistent. To determine where this type of testing originates from, you must travel all

the way back to Socrates in ancient Greece. Then, Socrates believed in testing his students
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through the use of conversations. He didn’t think of any answer as right or wrong, instead he

used those answers to ask more questions and continued the conversations (Mathews). Even

today, this form of teaching is still considered superior, because it leads to open discussions and

the flow of ideas. It helps students explore different understandings of material, and helps them

become more active thinkers. Since Socrates, over the years, education advocates have slowly

started integrating the requirements of more tests. Jay Mathews claims, “Standardized exams

have many sources. In imperial China in the A.D. 7th century, government job applicants had to

write essays about Confucian philosophy and compose poetry. In Europe, the invention of the

printing press and modern paper manufacturing fueled the growth of written exams” (Mathews).

While the increase of technology has led to more testing, the first person to bring forth the idea

of standardized testing in the U.S. was Horace Mann in 1845; he was a public education

advocate who wanted standardized essay testing. This caused an abundance in spelling,

geography and math tests, but these tests were seldom made standardized (Mathews). It wasn’t

until the 20th century that standardized testing became more popular; with the intelligent test

created by Alfred Binet in 1904 and the multiple-choice test created by Frederick J. Kelly. A lot

of Americans started to recognize these tests as appropriate ways for our society to build on

merit, instead of ethnicity or gender. Little did they know, that these tests were biased towards

the already disadvantaged. A testing expert by the name of H.H. Goddard identified 83 percent

of Jews, 80 percent of Hungarians, 79 percent of Italians and 87 percent of Russian immigrants

assessed at Ellis Island as “feeble minded” (Mathews). Eventually Harvard University science

historian, Stephen Jay Gould, argued, “‘Most are poor and have never gone to school; many have

never held a pencil or pen in their hand.’ Yet Goddard's interviewers expected them to sit down

with a pencil and ‘reproduce on paper a figure shown to them a moment ago, but now withdrawn
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from their sight.’"(Mathews). People were depicting the flaws of standardization early in the

process of creating these tests. Around the end of 1941, the SAT became the most popular

standard test used by the U.S. The use of standard tests has been growing ever since.

Fast forward to the present, currently Ohio has gone through so many different tests that

it’s hard to keep count. One of the many tests I will discuss is called the MAP test. MAP stands

for Measures of Academic Progress, it is an assessment that can be given up to four times in a

school year (Dial). This test is supposed to give teachers a detailed evaluation on their students

learning and their ability to comprehend reading. However, in personal experience, it has never

tested content that I have been taught and has a tendency of asking trick questions. On the 2013

STAAR test, there was a question that had to do with a poem titled “Midnight” by Sara

Holbrook. The question asked on this test was one that not even Sara, the author herself, could

answer (Strauss). Although the STAAR and the MAP are not completely identical, these two

tests are very similar. Seattle public schools started boycotting the MAP test, with Jesse

Hagopian as one of the well-known vocal leaders of the protest. The NEA (National Education

Association) and the AFT (American Federation of Teachers Community), along with many

other schools supported the Seattle schools’ protest. The MAP test costs roughly around four

million dollars (Rather), such money could be applied to more necessary things that could

benefit the students and their schools. Materials such as new textbooks, updated technology,

along with more qualified teachers – the list goes on. Some would argue that the four million

dollars used for the MAP test is justified. Respectively, in December of 2012, the Government

did an experiment on 4th and 5th graders in Illinois to determine if the MAP test was making a

positive impact on the educational field and if the test was worth the time and money. The

conclusion of this experiment was that the test did not help promote the educational field and
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students were not gaining from the test (Rather). With this irrefutable data why are MAP tests

still around? It is clear neither students nor educators are benefitting from this educational system

so why are schools, like Eaton Public Schools, still wasting their time, money and effort on a

faulty test?

While the MAP test is not a high-stakes test, the OGT, PARCC and the AIR test are. A

high-stakes test is considered as any test that is used to hold accountability or make important

decisions for students, teachers, schools or districts. The OGT included five parts of the test:

reading, writing, math, science and social studies. As a requirement to graduate, a student had to

pass all five sections. Ohio Department of Education got rid of the OGT in 2015, my freshman

year, but not before they had required my entire class to take it. The reason they discarded this

test was explained by Edith Starzyk; she claims, “The disconnect emerges in college, when 42

percent of incoming freshmen have to take remedial courses before they can start classes for

credit” (Starzyk). Simply put, the OGT failed to show if students were prepared for college or

not. Instead, Ohio came up with a new testing regime that consisted of exams over English I, II,

and III; algebra I and II, geometry, biology, physical science, American history and American

government. This new testing was influenced by PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of

Readiness for College and Careers) (Starzyk). It was only natural for Ohio to adopt the PARCC

test as the new standard graduation test. Fortunately, the PARCC test was very short lived. After

just one year of the test being put into practice, Ohio, along with numerous other states,

discarded it. There were several problems with this test. One problem I remember clearly, that I

personally encountered, was during the middle of one of the online English tests. The language

changed on all of the students’ tests, including mine. Already stressing over a timed test as

important as this one, panic quickly filled the room. Regardless of the system’s glitch, we never
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got back the time we lost. The PARCC test was very difficult, and caused a lot of unhealthy

stress to students. I saw many of my fellow peers panicking over their performance on the test

and how it would determine if they were going to graduate or not. We were put under so much

pressure by our educators. If students scored poorly on the tests, the scores negatively reflected

on the teachers’ ability to teach the curriculum and they would be punished. In hope to save

themselves and their career, educators started teaching to the tests instead of teaching to the

students. There were so many tests that were given to us students my freshman year: the OGT,

PARCC and a science test through AIR. Not only were we given those tests, but we had finals to

worry about as well. The last three months of school were spent testing, creating even more

stress. School should not be giving students panic attacks, and that was just one of the many

reasons why the PARCC test was dispensed of. On June 30, 2015, Patrick O’Donnell stated,

“Ohio became the latest state to pull out of the PARCC Common Core testing consortium

tonight after months of angry complaints about the new online tests having too many technology

glitches and of eating up far too much learning time for students” (O’Donnell2). The Ohio

Department of Education finally listened to the public and got rid of that PARCC, but decided to

keep standardized testing and adopt the AIR test. The AIR test is still being used today, but that

doesn’t mean it comes without faults. There are still technical problems, and testing still

consumes way too much time that schools could be using to teach. Some states, like Minnesota,

got rid of AIR because of its many problems, so it may be only a matter of time until Ohio

disbands from the AIR as well (O’Donnell2).

I officially completed the rest of my standardized testing at the end my Junior year, and

it went out with a bang. Juniors in Ohio are now required to take an AIR test for a Government

class and the ACT. The Air test is nowhere near as bad as the ACT. The ACT stands for
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American College Testing Program Assessment, and it is a multiple-choice test that is supposed

to predict the grades a student would get in their first year of college (Fairtest). The majority of

the Juniors were unprepared for it, and since it didn’t count towards graduation, some students

would just fill in random answers which messed up the scoring of the test for everyone else. The

ACT is already inaccurate as is, as noted by Fairtest, “The ACT regularly underestimates the

abilities of females, who earn higher grades than males in college, despite lower ACT scores”

they also state, “Even the test-maker admits that high school grades predict first-year college

grades better than ACT scores do” (Fairtest). Again, why are these tests taking over the

educational field, when there are so many studies that prove they are inaccurate and

unbeneficial?

THIS PICTURE DEPICTS THAT TEACHING TO THE TEST TAKES AWAY THE
ABILITY TO BE CREATIVE OR LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT THE WORLD.
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One of the biggest issues that occurs with standardized testing is the fact that teachers

start teaching to the test, and it disregards the students’ creativity and individual motivation of

learning. Tom Farr, an English teacher and father of three children, admits, “Standardization is

destroying the soul of creativity in our students. My subject area is about reading and writing,

something a majority of my students hate doing. This is tragic because they are both activities

that I love deeply and most young kids enjoy. Older students often tell me that they loved

reading and writing when they were younger, but they hate it now” (Farr). After all the testing

over the years, it has caused students to hate the things they used to love. It’s like having a bad

coach, director or leader; you might have liked that sport, music group, or hobby, but after

having them dictate how you are supposed to do that certain thing, it ruined it for you. Tom also

asks, “If in ten years, my children hate reading and writing, what will be responsible for

destroying their natural love of creativity?” (Farr). Testing will be what is held responsible for

the death of his children’s creativity.

The sole purpose for Standardized testing is so that the U.S. can hold accountability to

the teachers, and make sure that the students are learning what they are supposed to be learning

in the classroom. Nevertheless, the U.S. is going about the education system all wrong. America

should start converting over to the same system as Finland. Emmeline Zhao, writer at the

Huffington Post, states, “In the U.S., states give annual high-stakes exams that determine

whether schools must undergo reforms, in some cases whether students can pass to the next

grade level or graduate from high school, and increasingly whether teachers can receive tenure

and keep their jobs. Yet the U.S. tends to rank in the middle on international tests.

Finland, in contrast, the few tests students take are low stakes, said Finnish educator, Jari

Lavonen in a presentation on Thursday in New York. Assessments are used as a tool for
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professional development and to help teachers gauge student growth, never for accountability.”

(Zhao). They don’t take high-stake, stressful testing in Finland, yet when the students there do

eventually take the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), they do

exceptionally well. Finland has one of the best educational systems in the world so why is

America using a completely opposite education strategy than Finland? If the U.S. is so envious

of Finland’s success, then maybe they should adopt their policies instead of progressing in the

complete opposite direction. Another education policy that the U.S. could attempt is hiring

teacher evaluators for the school. Instead of just yearly reviewing the teacher using the principle,

they could use these evaluators to weekly help the teachers be better, and to make sure that the

students are learning. There are multiple ways the U.S. could alter their educational field and

create a system that allows students to apply themselves and progress learning through the

educational process. However, it doesn’t seem like that will happen anytime soon with the

constant increase of tests in the search for the perfect standardized test.

In conclusion, standardized testing is biased, inaccurate, unbeneficial and causes a lot of

controversy in the educational field to both teachers and students. Educators are afraid to stray

from the curriculum so they teach to tests instead of teaching to the students which ultimately

strips the motivation to learn from the students. It is clear neither students nor teachers are

benefitting from our current educational system and is wasting time, money and effort on faulty

tests. There is hope in the future that while there are many educators calling for more tests, there

are places in the world such as Finland that has a learning-friendly environment and the students

there are able to learn and grow their minds without fear of life-determining tests.
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Works Cited

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the-most-brilliant-and-intelligent-minds-do-not-shine. Accessed 10 Apr. 2018.

Carla. “The Problem with Standardized Testing.” The Teaching Experiment, 12 Apr. 2016,

teachingexperiment.com/2014/03/problem-testing/. Accessed 10 Apr. 2018

Dial, Kristina. “MAP Testing.” Prezi.com, 11 Apr. 2014, prezi.com/30pejn0ofxt8/map-testing/. Accessed

on 10 Apr. 2018.

Farr, Tom. “Standardization Isn't Just Killing Students' Creativity.” Medium, The Synapse, 10 Nov. 2015,

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Accessed 10 Apr. 2018.

Mathews, Jay. “Just Whose Idea Was All This Testing?” The Washington Post, WP Company, 14 Nov.

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Accessed on 10 Apr. 2018.

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ter_woeful_first_year.html. Accessed on 10 Apr. 2018.

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Popham, James. “Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality.” Why Standardized Tests

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