Educational Reform in a Modern Society

Standardized Testing

Reaching its institutional climax in 2001 with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) under the Bush Administration and the 107th Congress of the United States, standardized testing has become a controversial issue in modern American politics. Originally instituted as a hopeful educational reform to evaluate the nation’s students’ proficiency in math, reading, and writing, incentivize comprehensive teaching methods, and build a mechanism by which students could receive individualized attention per their individual needs, NCLB has rather become a tool by which educators, administrators, and public officials are able to hamper students’ abilities to learn while perpetuating the many glaring problems of the U.S. educational system.

Though standardized tests were not established by NCLB, the Act radically altered standardized tests’ application. Originally purposed to evaluate students’ natural talents and interests, standardized testing was commonly employed to point students to potential careers suited to their natural abilities. NCLB, however, has converted standardized testing from that of a directional tool for aiding students in engaging the professional world to that of an evaluative tool by which to separate students based on their individual test scores–offering students with poor scores intensive courses and minimal attention and those with outstanding scores exceptional educational opportunities and individualized attention.

This, in essence, promotes a discriminatory atmosphere in which studies counter to those heavily emphasized by standardized tests (math, reading, and writing) have become marginalized. As a result, students who show a natural inclination for or talent in such studies have likewise become marginalized–labeling students as “under-performing test-takers” rather than artists, writers, and problem solvers. Therefore, NCLB has been rightly labeled an aid to student stereotyping, a stint to creative cultivation, and the manifestation of educational darwinism.

For more, see Part II of this series.


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