The Benefits of Failure
The public’s attitude toward standardized testing plays a large role in its implementation and development. Over the past few years, state education departments have faced increased scrutiny due to worries about high-stakes tests and their effect on education. Most recently, the achievement gap between lower class minority students and high class white students has been brought to the public eye and fought against. However, there are still many that argue that standardized tests are actually beneficial to students, teachers, and education as a whole. In Latasha Gandy’s “Don’t Believe the Hype: Standardized Tests Are Good For Children, Families, and Schools,” she claims that standardized tests actually help minority or low income students by displaying the inequality of schooling. She argues that these tests are one of the most effective and convincing tools to use to fight for educational justice. Since she public is now aware of the achievement gap between minority and white students, schools will now be forced to answer to the inequality and eventually fight to fix it.
To begin, standardized tests are more than just one test taken and eventually forgotten about. The implications of these tests grow more and more over time and could follow the students for months even years after the final answer is circled on the paper. So yes, while standardized tests may be a tool to show the inequity of schooling for minority and low income students, that realization is not directly benefitting these schools, students, and communities. In fact, it is likely harming them. Low performing schools lose funding, low performing students are held back academically, and communities with low performing students are more susceptible to crime. Two studies, The Cambridge Study on Delinquent Development and the Pittsburgh Youth Study, both found links between low academic performance and adolescent delinquency. Although these tests are showing the score gap for the public to see, the students still have to suffer the consequences of the gap. The inequity that is shown in the test results ruin futures and lessens already scarce resources for schools. It is hard to find benefit in those student’s lower performance.
The constant failures and lower scores of minority and lower class students would be to overlook if they were not in vain. However, the “achievement gap” still exists and has existed since the beginning of standardized testing. According to the NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Caucasian American and African American gap in mathematics for 17 year olds was 32 points in 1982 while in 2004 it was 28 points. In reading achievement tests, the gap for 17 years olds in 1984 was 32 points and in 2004 it was 29. For hispanic Americans, the gap in mathematics was 27 points in 1982 for mathematics and 24 in 2004. In reading, the Hispanic gap 27 points in 1984 and then increased to 29 points in 2004. Therefore, to say that these tests are benefitting these students because it helps communities recognize the gap so that they can close it is just not true. That would be an excellent concept, if it were actually happening. In reality though, the gap still exists. Although it is narrowing in some cases, progress is slow. It took twenty years for the gap to narrow by three points. In that time, hundreds of thousands of students suffered the consequences of lower performance of standardized tests.
All in all, to say that standardized tests are benefitting minority students is insulting to the students who every year face the uphill battle of these tests and continued to be frustrated by the results. In theory, the concept of standardized tests being used as the tool to identify and abolish the achievement gap is amazing. However, in reality, that goal is just not being achieved. The achievement gap still exists today despite its existence being discovered over thirty years ago. There is now a lot more awareness for the problem but that is no consolation to the students who are failing and the schools that are getting less funding. To say that a racial achievement gap is beneficial is to undermine the effect it has on minority students.
Works Cited
“Education and Delinquency: Summary of a Workshop.” Linking School Performance and Delinquency. The National Academy of the Sciences, 2000. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.
Gandy, Latasha. “Don’t Believe the Hype: Standardized Tests Are Good for Children, Families and Schools.” Education Post. Education Post, 11 Jan. 2016. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.
“NAEP – Achievement Gaps.” NAEP – Achievement Gaps. National Center for Educational Statistics, 22 Sept. 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2016.
Rowan Counterintuitive 