1) Do standardized tests measure your ability Essay

1) Do standardized tests measure your ability - Essay Example Standardized tests are common in USA and many other countries around the world. Standardized tests are administered to students mainly at mid-term and also at the end of the term. Despite the widespread usage of standardized tests, however, the question of the efficacy of the standardized tests in measuring the students’ ability is a highly controversial issue. A critical look at this debate shows that the use of standardized tests to measure students’ ability is not effective. This paper gives an argument to show that the standardized tests do not accurately measure students’ ability. To begin with, one of the reasons why the standardized tests do not accurately measure the students’ ability is that most of the time, the questions used in the standardized tests covers only a small portion of the syllabus. In other words, it is not possible for the questions used in the standardized tests to cover everything leant in the syllabus (Garrison, 2009). For this reason, it is possible for the questions used in the standardized tests to cover only the aspects of the syllabus that some students have not understood well or are not good at. For that reason, some students fail in standardized tests not because they are not intelligent, but because the aspect of the syllabus covered by the questions is the aspect that they have not grasped well or they are not good at. This fact shows that the use of standardized test to measure the students’ ability is not an effective way of testing the students’ ability. Secondly, the standardized tests do not take cognisance of the fact that some students may be poor in written exams but very good at oral exams (Popham, 1999). There are, of course, many bright students who fail their written exams, not because they are not intelligent, but simply because they are not good at written exams.