Wasserberg and Rottman (2016), stated, throughout the years many students have felt incapable of finishing school due to their results from standardized test. They also, said out of all the teachers surveyed seventy-seven percent agreed that standardized test takes up most of their time from teaching and allowing the students to learn.
Chu, Babenko, Cui, and Leighton (2014) pointed out that standardized tests have been the essential tool to calculate a student intelligence over years. According to Chu et al (2014) teachers are helping students out in the process of studying for these tests and help them prepare for in class activities as well. However, Howard, Woodcock, Ehrich and Bokosmaty (2017) shared that the results received from any assessment that is assigned to a student is testing their intelligence through a computer or paper and that can be biased and unfair. Some negative effects on the standardized test have been found on uprising college students because teaching to the test can both be good and bad for a student (Wasserberg et al, 2016) & (Sandra, 2016).
Many researchers or studies out there have already discussed many topics about standardized testing. In where they talk about the positive and the good effects standardized testing have on students and their future. However, some never talk about the negative influence or the emotions and feelings students have on standardized tests after repletely taking them. Due to this, the gap that I would be filling would be further explaining both the negative and positive perceptions of standardized testing and elaborating on the emotion’s students experience after repletely taking a standardized test in an urban community.
Therefore, I hypothesize that the research I will find would be relating to the benefits provided by the standardized test to the student and not much information would be provided on the negative effects they have on the student. Literature Review Chu, Babenko, Cui, and Leighton (2014) Standardized tests have been the essential tool to calculate a student intelligence over years. Students have been adapted to take an assessment year after year to see if their comprehension is growing. Education has been using standardized testing in a way to see if the students are actually learning.
Right after every school year, students are faced with at least one assessment that needs to be completed and passed. If not, the student technically did not learn anything over the years. The assessments are taken especially after a core class such as reading, math, science, history and much more. Those standardized tests have become a ritual for students in urban communities. It does not only affect high school students and teachers, but it can also affect the elementary and middle school. (Wasserberg and Amy, 2016) and (Steven J. Howard, Stuart Woodcock, John Ehrich and Sahar Bokosmaty 2017) both agreed that throughout the year’s many students have felt incapable of finishing school due to their results from the standardized test and measuring a student ability through a computer or paper can be biased and unfair.
However, Ebert and Pham (2016) claim that one of the main test barriers can be the lack of understanding the English language. As the scores come back from these life sucking tests, students find themselves feeling unintelligence or not smart enough because they can’t pass a simple test. Standardized tests are a huge responsibility for high school students. But it doesn’t only affect the students it also affects the teachers. Educators are feeling pressured regarding of showing their effectiveness. Now in days, even teachers are being affected by the students’ performance on standardized tests. If a school test scores on standardized test come back high, the school staff are really teaching, and the kids are learning. If a school test scores on standardized test come back low, the school staff are really not teaching, and kids are not learning.
However, both outcomes are still affected by a system that is measuring a student intelligence wrong. The main reason standardizing test scores are important to a school system is self-explanatory. Even though some staffs don’t agree on the fact that they can really measure how much a teacher work, if at the end of the day is up to the students to decide if they want to learn or not. A standardized test is an assessment that can determine if a student is really learning. The two different types are aptitude test and achievements tests.
The aptitude test can measure how well a student can do in an educational setting, such as the SAT and ACT both measures how well a high school student can do in college. The standardized achievement test is used for schools, to look at the effectiveness overall of the teachers, staff, and students. According to (Chu, 2014) and (Christine, 2016), they both agree that low results on provincial or state secondary exit examinations can prevent students from graduating with a high school diploma. Standardized educational assessments are a tool to calculate a student ability to display what they have learned in subjects such as literacy, mathematics, and science.
The objective of testing students is to rationally separate students that have been able to grasp the concept of the class and the ones who have not. This way the school can determine the advanced and the not so quick learners in order to separate them and treat them differently when it comes to teaching. States should delineate what students should know and be able to do, teachers should match instructions to those standards, and state tests should measure how well students meet those expectations. If a teacher finds themselves teaching a class that half of the students failed the standardized test the year before and the other half passed.
They will have some type of struggle having the class on one level if half of them are behind. (Martin and Amy 2016), out of all the teachers surveyed seventy-seven percent agreed that Standardized test takes up most of their time from teaching and allowing the students to learn. Yes, the standardized test helps us see if students have learned but they can really pressure a teacher. More importantly in core classes that really have a huge impact on both students and teachers. (Sandra Stosky, 2016). critics claim that it reduces education to a limited range skill, ignores the importance of comprehension, and neglects subjects that are not tested, such as history, civics, geography, and the arts.
In an urban community is sometimes common to see the lack of enthusiasm for standardized testing. (Ruanda Garth McCullough and Anne Marie Ryan, 2014), Test scores are showing urban communities are reaching the same level as suburban communities. Teachers are lacking and stressing in finding a way to best help the students in urban communities. (Martin J. Wasserberg) and (Amy Rottman, 2016) differ on the reason why students are not passing the test, which is the pressure they feel when taking them. They have to deal with the comparison of them and a smart student if they do low or not smart enough to get a good score.
Taking an assessment knowing you can fail can be hard because students start to believe they are dumb or not capable of going far like college. The history of the causes of standardized testing. As testing been expanding itself to be a way to determine if a child brain really grasps what was taught to them, programs have been created for children to help them. “Congress took up the issues as part of its reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001” (Randy E Bennett,2016).
The standardized test was adapted to the education world because it was believed it would better the understanding of the teacher based on the students. (Christine D. Kunkel, 2016) and (Randy,2016) both stated that in 1987 the assessment movement was established in the USA and it made it mandatory that 95% of student population needs to participate in the assessment and it granted the state to punish that did not meet the standard. The change was expected to bring something good, but they actually slowed down the way of teaching (Christine, 2016) stated, but (Sandra, 2016) believes that when the strategy teaching to the test was introduced it actually cause the slowed down of teaching because teachers taught for the test not for kids to learn about the real world or important skills. Some time is always spent studying for the exam then learning about some important things in life like life skills and the way of applying knowledge to a real-life world.
In a class is not only taught to learn but taught for a test. The standardized test is a high achievement for some students. Which means they have a high chance of failing, out of the four answers there’s only one correct. Some don’t even take a chance to read the question and they circle anything. Students are different, they come from different places which make their ability of thinking and mindset different too.
These tests are not specific to a person which makes it hard for the students to be comfortable when taking the test. Causing some students to lack and fail a test because their comprehension wasn’t that good on that day or they think differently. If they fail once in high school the sad part that it can follow them to college. Some negative effects on the standardized test have been found on uprising college students because teaching to the test can be both good and bad for a student (Martin et al, 2016) & (Sandra, 2016).
Standardized tests have been the essential tool to calculate a student’s intelligence over years (Martin et al, 2016) this statement was refuted by (Stosky, 2016) who said “the most obvious reason is that k-12 schools have coped with an abundance of mandated testing since the early 1990s, and the consequences of poor student performance under federal guidelines, have in the name of accountability come to fall more on teachers than students”. The stress placed on teachers and students is tremendous. Teachers need to work extra hard to accommodate each student in their lesson plan.
Make sure everybody is on pace. Students have to work hard too. Making sure they pay attention, they study, they practice in order to pass the test. According to (Chu et al, 2014) teachers are helping students out in the process of studying for these tests and help them prepare for in-class activities as well. During class, students are expected to engage in every lesson, raise their hand or shout out their answer with energy. Those assessments may seem easy work, but they implant a large amount of stress and a lack of confidence in students.
Everything dealing with education and a student has to be determined by a test that needs to be passed in order to let people know you are smart. The point of having an educational system is to help teach students things that can benefit them later in life. Pressuring them with an assessment every year can really cause a lack in their need of wanting to learn. Students tend to lose interest in school really fast. Steven et al (2017) the results received from any assessment that is shared with the student and is not the perfect score can limit their need to learn more.
Even though the results may not be accurate due to lack of concentration, studying or any problem like uncomfortable testing environment. If adding things that require studying can really change the way, they see the future. Highschool students also deal with other things they school. Causing a hug lack of interest in studying but sometimes the initiative of wanting to study is there but there’s no time available for them with all the things they are going through or dealing with.
Students are also having to compete with other students around their district or state when it comes down to seeing who can get a better score on these tests. “A student’s individual result is compared to the normal distribution of results in a population, in which a student’s result is compared to a specified performance level” according to (Graham and Neu). Bringing stress and many other feelings towards the student life. Repeatedly taking Standardized test year after year, can awaken many side effects a student may have towards taking them.
Both (Colwell, 2013 and National Council of Teachers of English, 2014) believe that repeatedly taking standardized test can lead to anxiety and limit student learning because they only focus on the negative outcomes. Students can develop emotions like anger, fear or unconfident if they are constantly repeating a test that they are failing. (Colwell, 2013) states anxiety is identified to an unpleasant emotional state received when a person feels under pressure. Standardized testing also limits or change the way a student gets recognized in their school.
A student might be book smart but can’t pass a standardized test making them seem a little unbalanced which can cause many emotions to his encouragement to learn. According to (Schulte, Elliott and Kratochwill, 2001) and Kunkel (2016) students feel the need to study more when there’s a prize or something to win at the end. However, the idea was refuted by (Weaver, 2011) who stated that students don’t really like studying for tests because there’s not offered at the end but a “good job”. Standardized testing brings many negative and positive perceptions to a student life especially when they are suffering every year taking them and not being able to pass them.
So, the amount of assessments they have to retake increase making it harder for them to study and just focus on one test. Students feel stereotyped when placed in intensive class year after year to receive more help, but they don’t see like that. (Wasserberg and Rottman, 2016) states that a report was made on how students felt with their race and levels they were placed in because of their scores and it shows how they had less effort to prove themselves smart if society had a negative outlook on them.
In contrary (Stotsky, 2016) believed that students weren’t really worried about discrimination in standardized test but what they were really worried about is getting all the information on how to pass the test in a limited amount of time. At the end of the day, students are put under pressure after repletely taking multiple standardized test without having a reward. Passing a few standardized tests might place a person in college or allow them to win a scholarship but the hard work put in to get there is something some people might not want to get through.
Method Research Method According to Kothari 2004, as was original written by Clifford Woody (research comprises defining and redefining problems, formulating hypothesis or suggested solutions: collecting, organizing and evaluating data: making deductions and reaching conclusions: and at last carefully testing the conclusions to determine whether they fit the formulating hypothesis). For this research study, I will be using the mixed research method.
According to Creswell 2017, “Mixed methods research is an approach to inquiry involving collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, integrating the two forms of data, and using distinct deigns that may involve philosophical assumptions and theoretical frameworks.” Creswell stated that qualitative research is the process where data is collected through numbers and data and that quantitative research is the process of collecting data through statistics.
Using mixed methods allows my research to gather information about the student’s feelings and statistics on repeatedly taking standardized test. I chose the mixed research method, because I can ask the students well written questions that can collect both their personal views and experiences on the research. This will help me collect enough data to back up the research that I will achieve throughout my paper.
According to Creswell 2017, “Mixed methods is chosen because of its strength of drawing on both qualitative and quantitative research it provides a sophisticated, complex approach and it is a useful strategy to have more complete understanding of research problems and questions.” Participant The participants were high school students with ages between 14 to 18 and above. The survey was shared by sending a link to all the students at my school and other urban communities. Materials Using a computer, I created my survey.
Through survey monkey I formatted my survey and prepared it to send it out digitally to my participants. The digital copy of my survey was composed of one page and consisted ten questions, titled “Standardized Testing in Urban Communities”. The questions varied from being multiple choice and written responses. The combination of both forms of questions can help me gather both information through numbers collected by the multiple choice and experience or feeling collected through written response questions.
Procedure The process of this research was composed of a lot of steps, but the work been done was pretty much straightforward and easy. I started by choosing a topic that I would like to do some research about. Leading me to decide to do some research on students and testing. However, I needed to come up with a research question that was precise and direct. Wanting to know more about students and standardized testing, I decided to write about both positive and negative perceptions held by students in an urban high school from repeatedly taking standardized tests.
After narrowing down my research question, I moved along in creating my survey which was made up of ten questions. The first few questions were designed to allow me to identify and get to know the participant. The other half were designed to collect data on the participants and their experience with standardized testing and I finished off with written response to collect personal statements from the participants. Being the tool that I needed my survey was going to be the key in concluding my research.
