Standardized Testing: Obsolete Artifact, or Mechanism of Social Change?
Micah Vogt
When I say “standardized testing”, how do you feel? If you felt anything close to repulsion then you are among the majority of people. From my experience in the Education Program I can say that there is visible discomfort as soon as testing is brought up in our classes, doubly so if we are referencing standardized tests. So, for this inquiry project I wanted to know if standardized tests were worth it, and if they can be tools for positive social change. After reading several articles concerned with standardized testing I have come to this conclusion: standardized tests are a thoroughly mixed bag.
Many things have been written about the negative outcomes of standardized testing such as increased social sorting, generating stress in students, erasure of minority knowledge, and the current neo-liberal movement attempting to strip the public school system in favor of private education. The most unexpected negative outcome I found related to standardized testing was that many schools have fundamentally changed how they operate in order to focus on marketing themselves as high achieving schools to attract more students.
With such a long list of negative outcomes it might seem impossible to defend the practice of standardized testing, but I am here to say that standardized tests can still be an invaluable tool for assessing social equity. Some authors, such as Jo Chrona, have advocated for continuing standardized testing because it is one of the only methods available for measuring progress in achieving equitable education outcomes amongst Indigenous learners.
So, based on what I have read, I have come to the conclusion that standardized tests are a worthwhile practice, but modern implementation often times produces a myriad of unintended outcomes which impede social progress. To quote Christie, I don’t want to “throw the baby out with the bath water”. Because of this, I believe that future inquiries should address how we should modify our standardized testing practices to best support positive social change.
I will leave you with the metaphor I created to explain my opinion about standardized tests before I began researching this paper:
Standardized tests are kind of like electricity; sometimes it’s used to turn the lights on and sometimes it’s used to torture people.
Personally, I think we should focus on keeping the lights on and avoid the torture.
