Standardized Testing

In recent years there has been an increase in standardized testing and the range of children that are tested. While testing can be good and useful when used in moderation, the amount of testing that we are seeing in schools now has become harmful to students, teachers, and schools.
When used in moderation, testing can offer information on how students are progressing compared to the rest of their peers across the country and in their school. They can also show where students are struggling and which subjects they are strong in. However, when teachers are forced to "teach to the test" because so much is now riding on test scores, the students suffer. The amount of information that they "have" to learn is increased and the creativity with which it can be taught, because of time restraints to fit all of the material in , decreases. The students also feel more pressure to test well. Some students do not test well when given a time limit or when some of the tools that are used daily in the classroom, like calculators, are taken away. This leads to feelings of failure when so much, like entrance to colleges, is riding on a test score. With the pressure for students to do well increasing, the age at which children are exposed to more difficult material decreases. Some kindergartners now have tutors because they are considered to be struggling in reading or math. Pressure is put on these children to learn how to read and write and reason sooner, and this leads some children to feel that they are failures or are not as good as their classmates.
The curriculum that the students are exposed to also suffers when material such as art, music, history, and P.E. do not appear on the tests. With children in the United States becoming increasingly obese, cutting P.E. and increasing in-desk time can be detrimental to the health of students. Not to mention that all the energy that would have been worn off in P.E. is now sitting in a desk in the classroom and is supposed to be quite and listen. Art and music, which enrich a child's life and are an integral part of the lives of many adults, are also being cut from schools when funding that use to go to the fine arts is now being used for math, reading, and science - the big test subjects. History, another standard subject in schools, is also being cut back since it does not appear on tests. But if we do not teach our students about where they come from and their country's and the world's history, how can we expect improvement in the future? Aren't we just setting ourselves up to repeat the mistakes of the past if we do not take the time to teach a new generation about them now.
The teachers also suffer from over-use of standardized testing. When they only have so much time to get through all the material that will come up on a test that the students must pass so they can get into high school or go onto the next grade or so that the district meets in AYP, some of the creativity and exploration that should be a core part of teaching gets cut.
With the increased pressure for students to do well on these standardized tests that are becoming more numerous and more ingrained into our school system, everyone suffers, not least of all the students and their learning and hopes of competing with other students from other countries.