The Negative Effects of High-Stakes Tests

Visualize the annualized standardized tests by millions of US students. This directly affects teaching methods, school budget, and grades. Millions of schools are currently using high-risk tests to identify these key factors. The United States wants the students to work well with standardized tests. Otherwise, the school district will be subject to economic influence due to "the law prohibiting children left behind" (Au 502). This puts pressure on everyone from administrator to school district's students.

On the other hand, mandatory high-risk testing has many adverse effects. They may encourage "guiding the exam" and "shrinking the course". They may have negative influences on teachers, ignoring those with outstanding achievements, or conversely ignoring those with poor academic achievements, possibly causing unexpected results in classroom behavior. They may promote cheating and increase dropout rate in various ways. Some also argue that these scores do not even evaluate academic performance or the quality of education. There is also a possibility of cultural bias and a sure increase of student's stress level.

I found this to be very interesting. Many societies are not surprising, such as the adolescent mental health, the devastating impact of education on testing, and how high standardization tests exacerbate the inequality between wealthy communities and poor communities I believe that success will be achieved within the final result. As a group, we dullly want the educational system that fosters student's personality, passion and creativity, but if it violates the holy grail of "final achievement" it will create deep sarcasm. Unfortunately, the phenomenon "I am not in my backyard" emerged in my mind. The only way you can change this is to change the culture of the education system and remove the high risk test

Does the testing policy of the past 10 years tell us the possibility to improve the education system through high risk testing? Studies have shown that high risk assessment may stimulate teacher-led change and promote it. However, these changes are often superficial adjustments to practice, and often focus on changes in content coverage and test preparation practice rather than a substantial improvement in the lesson. Let's examine the effect based on the above four test strategy theories.