As the American education system continues to place more emphasis on standardized testing to measure academic achievement, critics have argued that it can be more harmful than helpful to students’ development in the long run. Here are some of the pros and cons of standardized testing:
PROS
Every student measured against same narrow, irrelevant set of standards
Holds teachers personally accountable for success of large, monolithic testing organizations
Western tradition of critical thinking best embodied in bubble-sheet format
Keeps students quiet for upwards of 90 minutes
Repeated testing carefully develops teachers’ cheating skills
Only biased against kids who couldn’t afford college anyway
Data. More data.
CONS
There are easier ways to measure parents’ income
Takes up time that could be used to teach toward additional standardized tests
Standardized test–scoring machines kill and maim more than 200 workers annually
Allows U.S. students to be compared with those of other developed nations
Fails to measure attractiveness, which will have far greater impact on future success or failure
Students may in fact become too prepared for future
Probably could be more profitable
