The first article’s standpoint is being negative about standardized tests and exams. To support this argument, the author provides reasons that mainly disagree with such exams. The author says that there can be other efficient benchmarks to look at the student’s academic performance. The author explains how teachers and publish grade distributions are trustworthy because many teachers are trying to assign a similar task and use a similar rubric with each other to make the grade distribution much fair to everyone. Therefore, the author states that there is no need to be apprehensive about the random standards and fudging academic performance results. With the second reason, the author discusses that there are possibilities of cheating in the public exam, and grades and other evaluation reports can do the same job. Therefore, the author mentions that there’s no reason to lay prominence on such an exam since it does not provide a holistic review, nor it’s trustworthy. Thirdly, the author claims that exams are too expensive, and it doesn’t have a direct relationship with good teaching and learning skills. What the writer insisted was that school with high test scores doesn’t mean they teach well, nor gives other impression or influence since it’s just a small part of the achievement.
The author in the second argument mainly discusses about the negative aspects of the standardized test, but later on, stands on the neutral side by stating that we should find the middle ground. What the author talked about the disadvantages of the standardized test was that it drives the educator to teach the test. The writer explained that teaching the test only develops a student’s knowledge on certain points that are only discussed in the test paper. The second point was that it makes educators to cheat, such as inflation of test scores for the educator’s benefit. The third point discussed was that it gives students high pressure and stress. What the author came up with is finding the middle point between tilting too much towards the standardized exam, and completely ignore its prominence. What was claimed was that because US student’s academic performance level wasn’t high at the international level, we should create nationwide achievement goals, the Common Core State Standards to decrease the gap. At the same time, making the test system better to fulfill the primary purpose of education should be prioritized, which was what the author was discussing.
Personally, I agree with the second article’s argument, which is having the middle ground. There are some advantages of standardized tests, especially for international students who are applying for American universities. The grading scales and standards are different around the world, and even its teachers are trying to apply the same rubric in America, that isn’t for the international students. Some schools in the world focus on the relative scoring system, which means that even though students are great, if others are greater than them, then they cannot get A since it’s graded relatively. However, I do acknowledge that there are drawbacks to this system since it brings teachers to focus on the exam and teach students a skill to conquer the exam, instead of getting the appropriate knowledge for the subject. This means that even though students get a good result on the test, they might not be able to perform well in real-life because exams have certain patterns that allow the student to memorize the pattern and solve the problem easily, regardless of their real knowledge. Therefore, I believe that instead of putting too much prominence on the standardized test, we should focus on holistic review, or watching the student from multiple perspectives.
Writer: Yeyoung Jeon
