Standardized testing is for many students and teachers alike, the most anxiety-ridden part of education. Students worry about being unable to memorize terms or formulas, and teachers worry about their teaching abilities and being evaluated based on their students’ performances.
In the past decade, the anti-standardized testing demographic has grown at a rapid pace. Many parents believe that standardized testing is overshadowing other teaching methods and styles of learning. A recent poll by Teachers College at Columbia University, “Who Opts Out and Why,” shows that 33.8 percent activists in the “opt-out” community (the community devoted to eradicating standardized testing) believe standardized tests force teachers to “teach to the test” by using drilling methods to promote the memorization of test answers, rather than “inquiry-based” learning. Rather than being encouraged to think critically and get the most out of their learning experience, students are taught standardized test-taking skills and other topics related to test preparation. Green Saraisky, one of the designers and administrators of the poll, said, “People in the opt-out movement are not saying the whole system is broken. They’re not anti-testing; they’re anti-standardized testing.”
Aside from standardized testing having too much of an effect on the classroom, many opt-outs also disapprove of the privatization of education and increased corporate influence in schools. In the same poll, 30.4 percent said that they oppose the growing role of corporations in schools, and 16 percent said they oppose the privatization of schools and fear the role of corporations in public schools.
Through standardized testing, and the “cutoff” determining whether a student is competent, politicians and investors who want to privatize public schools and make a profit off them, can use the harsh grading scales to argue against the effectiveness of public schools. In other words, the politicians and investors who set the “pass or fail” standards can make them exceedingly high, which causes many students to not pass these tests, and thus, the “private schooling is superior to public schooling” argument is brought up.
So what does it mean? It means that teachers are teaching for testing, because (a) they are being paid based on their students’ test scores and (b) they realize that if their students do not perform well, their jobs, and the schools in which they work, are in jeopardy.
Overall, the repetitive cycle of standardized testing is really just a battle between the public school and the big shots who want to make a profit. Many parents and students are demanding that the faces behind these tests be held accountable, and that the effectiveness of standardized testing be reevaluated, with the teacher, student and public school in mind.
When asked about the necessary changes needed to be made to standardized testing, Oren Pizmony-Levy, assistant professor in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, said, “What needs to be changed is that we need to think about the purpose of assessing. Is it about feedback for teachers, about the students, or is it about controlling and governing the system?
“I think the public needs to be more informed about the purpose of assessments. We need to go back and ask ourselves, why are we trying to do these? The public needs to know who’s pushing for it and who can actually use this. The public needs to know how politics and power shape the type of assessments we are having in schools these days.”
So why do so many schools focus on and depend on standardized testing? If it’s to evaluate how capable a student is, then why are non-standardized tests not enough? If politics is the reason why standardized testing is so widely used in schools, and not for the benefit of students or teachers, then education has a huge problem.
Pizmony-Levy also shared with the Amsterdam News the lack of diversity in the opt-out movement. “We also found that, the opt-out movement is supported more by white respondents than other racial minorities in the U.S.,” he said. “I suspect there are multiple reason for that. One, for an African-American parent, given their historical bad experiences with schools, for parents, testing is one of the only ways to hold schools accountable and to document any type of achievement gaps, so that’s one reason. A second reason is that at the same time that we have the opt-out movement we also have Black Lives Matter. I suspect that the activism and the energy is going to that movement and not to the opt-out movement, so I think that might be another reason.”
Although the lack of diversity in movements such as the opt-out movement is not uncommon, standardized testing is something that affects all students. Should Black students also protest these tests, or is combating the only evidence of academic achievement gaps in American schooling too risky?