Are you aware that recently New York has revised the state tests, which are required of third through eighth graders to graduate to the next grade, and added Common Core Standards? During the start of the 21st century previous state tests weren’t preparing students for college; these common core tests split the test up into several sections and required students to do much more. Because of lack of preparation for college, New york made standardized test consisting multiple choice answers that are based on true or false and essay questions. The tests generally fall into one of two categories. Achievement tests measure subject-specific knowledge and predict your child's ability to learn by measuring his mastery of school-success skills. These tests can provide you and the teacher with insight into their progress and identify areas for improvement.

It should be known that in the 21st century there are many ways of testing a child’s intelligence. Most experts believe that real life scenarios and problems should scale a childs learning, not just textbook questions to answer that you cannot apply to the real world.

However, during the present day, children and teens need to get certain scores on standardized tests to move forward in their academic careers. The majority of teachers and education experts agree that, ideally, students should maintain good grades, but wonder why standardized tests are a main priority. Should helping students pass standardized tests be the main goal of teachers?

In the article “Why Standardized Tests Don't Measure Educational Quality” W. James Popham writes “The problem of confounded causation involves three factors that contribute to students' scores on standardized achievement tests: (1) what's taught in school, (2) a student's native intellectual ability, and (3) a student's out-of-school learning”
As of May 26, 2011, a National Research Council report found no evidence test-based incentive programs are working: "Despite using them for several decades, policymakers and educators do not yet know how to use test-based incentives to consistently generate positive effects on achievement and to improve education.”

Ana Cruz, an elementary school teacher at Robert E. Simon PS. 165 for eight years, prepares students for the standardized tests and believes they are ineffective. “Standardized tests are unfair and discriminatory against non English speakers and students with special needs. I say this because Special education students take the same tests as other children, receiving few of the accommodations usually provided to them as part of their Individualized Education Plans” she said.

Lisa Grimaldi, another elementary school teacher at PS. 165 who assigns and prepares students when it is the first year students take the standardized test (3rd grade). She considers standardized test as a good thing. "Standardized tests are reliable and objective measures of student achievement. Without them, policy makers would have to rely on tests scored by individual schools and teachers who have a vested interest in producing favorable results. Multiple-choice tests, in particular, are graded by machine and therefore are not subject to bias. 'Teaching to the test' can be a good thing because it focuses on essential content and skills, eliminates time-wasting activities that don't produce learning gains, and motivates students to excel,” she said. However there was one thing that really bugged her about standardized test. She says that standardized tests cause “severe stress” in younger children. Students would start to get headaches during the prep and have a lot of anxiety.


Keith Radley, a assistant professor at the department of psychology, blames the controversial No Child Left Behind Act for what he sees as some problems with testing culture. No Child Left Behind was an Act created by George Bush during his presidency. The purpose of the act is to identify students weaknesses in order to provide improvement in them. “NCLB was not in place when I was in school. We did take annual tests, but they weren’t nearly as high stakes as current testing practices. However, for graduate school and licensure as a school psychologist I did have to take standardized tests. Tests can be anxiety provoking, particularly if you are unsure of what may be on the test or don’t feel confident about the material”, said Radley.

As he was preparing for graduate school and licensure examinations Radley did a lot of studying to familiarize himself with the content that would be on the exam. Once he took the test, he realized the questions were similar to what he studied and felt less anxious. Radley went out of his way to study more than what was provided during class and the outcome turned out to be him feeling confident about taking the test.

“Depending on the type of standardized test, it can be used for a variety of purposes. The term ‘standardized test’ is really referring to any test to which an individual’s performance is compared to that of other individuals. A standardized test could be an IQ test, an achievement test (something like the ACT, SAT, or tests used in the classification of learning disabilities)