I know most of you are sick of the debate of standardized testing by now, but I am still confused as to why it still exists. While many think standardized testing is helpful for placing students in the right level of education, I do not believe that this applies to today's education, especially in a generation growing out of technology. I have recently taken the GRE's and was not shocked to find that I did horrible. I personally know that I am not a good test taker when it comes to standardized tests. I did not test well on the SAT's or the Praxis, so why would I pass the GRE's. While I know I can be a strong student academically, I felt that the GRE's were riddled full of trick questions and did not consider the fact that the world is full of different kinds of learners. I know that my low scores will knock me out of the running for some schools but most schools nowadays do not place the sole reason for denying or accepting a student on their testing scores. I also know most scholars acknowledge that everyone learns and tests differently, so my big question is....Why is there still standardized testing?!
In search of an answer to how my under-qualified scores would effect me, I emailed most graduate departments asking their policy on GRE scores versus acceptance. A majority of them stated that they did not really look at standardized scores, but looked at the application as a whole. There were some schools that did set a standard for GRE scores, which really rubbed me the wrong way. Why set a standard for a test that most individuals will not take well due to the fact that it does not take into consideration various types of learners? While there obviously were some schools that disqualified me as a possible candidate, most did not use the GRE's as a main factor for accepting students. So, once again I'm going to ask, why is the United States still forcing students to take these unrelated and unfair standardized tests? If someone out there knows the answer to this, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!
I thought it was just me. Because I went to a technical college out of high school, and not an academic college, I didn't have to take the SATs or ACTs. I'm taking the Praxis is about a month and I'm pretty worried about it because while I've always been strong in English, I'm weak in math. I'm not looking forward to it... I wish there was a different means for assessment.
ReplyDeleteI wonder the same thing sometimes. I think maybe they are helpful to get an idea of correlations of area and student and whatnot but I disagree with how much reliability is placed on them.i don't think they should be heavily sweated over and I think it is unfair to place such negative outcomes like school closings and job loss on lower scoring areas.what preservice teacher goes into the field because they want to teach students how to score well on standardized tests?!? Sure as hell not I.
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