Honestly thinking over it, we’ve had so many parent-student meetings about state tests as each one seems to approach year. And each year we hear how we need such and such to pass the school year and move up to the next but we never hear about how these state standardized tests will help us with college. With these tests, we are all held to do tasks at a minimum. English TAKS and STAAR, using as an example, our essays are supposed to be twenty-six lines long, written, and cannot go past the space provided. What if we have much more to express within this one page essay? Some of us go for looking for a shortcut to get done with these tests because we need to, instead of actually using the essentials that we have necessary into completing the task at hand with our school work. “Standardized tests have been a part of American education since the mid-1800s. Their use skyrocketed after 2002's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) mandated annual testing in all 50 states. US students slipped from 18th in the world in math in 2000 to 31st place in 2009, with a similar decline in science and no change in reading. Failures in the education system have been blamed on rising poverty levels, teacher quality, tenure policies, and increasingly on the pervasive use of standardized tests.” (http://standardizedtests.procon.org/)
Mella Baxter wrote an article titled, “The Standardized Testing Debate: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly,” and in this article she expressed different points of view about standardized test. In this article, what stood out to me was that standardized test help teachers with evaluations that are given about them each year and the scores are mainly based off of their students test scores and how well or poorly they’ve performed. And we know that some students are highly brilliant with class work and things alike but can be poor test takers and all of their fate depends on these test and they’re judged off of these test. Which in her article she clearly explains and states the same