Assignment 16-Zent

 Speech Annotated Bibliography

Topic: Standardized testing has a negative impact on education.

Moon, Tonya R., et al. “State Standardized Testing Programs: Friend or Foe of Gifted Education?” Roeper Review, vol. 25, no. 2, Winter 2002, p. 49. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid,cpid,url&custid=s1176192&db=a9h&AN=9040162. 

“State Standardized Testing Programs: Friend or Foe of Gifted Education?” discusses the effects of state standardized testing on gifted students and their teachers. Its focus being, if students are only taught for the test then is that really beneficial (specifically for gifted students)? An analysis of multiple surveys, studies, and data on teachers’ and students’ responses to standardized tests. It concludes that most teachers only teach for the test, making it their main priority. And that this negatively affects students by forcing them to all learn the same things in the same way in hopes to succeed on the tests. 

This source is an academic peer reviewed paper from Kentucky Virtual Library. Moon has a subtle bias against standardized testing. This is seen in the lack of rebuttal arguing for the positive side of standardized testing. However, it does achieve its goal of answering the question that standardized tests are a foe to gifted kids. This source is more formal and professional than most of my other sources. 

Overall this piece deals with the effects of standardized testing on gifted children. I will use this to give examples of how teachers are forced to teach to the test. Also to show that students in low socioeconomic status schools are at a greater disadvantage to being taught only test materials in hopes to gain more money for their school. I will use this to show how both students and teachers are negatively affected by standardized testing. 

Cook, Lauren. “Standardized Testing Rules Our Lives.” Journal of College Admission, no. 244, Summer 2019, p. 53. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid,cpid,url&custid=s1176192&db=a9h&AN=137174088.

This is a short article begging for a change in the use of standardized testing. Lauren Cook is the dean of college and gap-year advising at the Jewish Community High School at the Bay. She details her multiple experiences of her students having to drop extracurriculars or over stressing just to prepare them for a standardized test. Cook describes the extremes people go to take these tests and how while you are in the middle of going through this process everything the student does is driven by a standardized test.

“Standardized Testing Rules Our Lives” is an academic article from the Journal of College Admissions found on Kentucky Virtual Library. Cook’s goal is to advocate for her students and other students by using her platform as a college counselor to inform others about the way standardized tests are ruling students’ lives. Even though this article does have a bias against standardized tests, it gives actual first hand evidence to back up that bias and gives multiple examples of why she has drawn this conclusion. 

I will use this article as a viewpoint of someone who is not a student but still very involved with students during the standardized testing process. This will give a different insight to my examples because it will prove that it is not just students who think they are being negatively impacted. It has made me think about the topic in a different way because it showed that people other than students are working and advocating for this problem.   

Dawn, Maddison. “Does Standardized Testing Kill Individuality?” TED, 2017, www.ted.com/talks/maddison_dawn_does_standardized_testing_kill_individuality. 

Madison Dawn discussed the harsh reality of the negative effects of standardized testing in our education systems. Our schools were transformed in the beginning of the 20th century to breed people that were able to do the same thing over and over again to make them excellent factory workers. However, now in the 20th century we are in a stage of innovation and our school systems have not changed to breed people who are creative and insightful. Dawn compares our current education systems to a fish trying to climb a tree. Us students, the fish, are trying to achieve something that is not relevant for our society anymore, the tree.

This Ted Talk has a clear bias against standardized testing in our current education system. When this video was taken, Dawn was going through the education system that values standardized testing greatly. This makes Dawn’s video a great recount of her first hand experience with standardized testing, unlike some of my other articles that are by authors more removed. The goal of this Ted Talk was to explain that standardized testing is outdated and killing off students’ individuality making it negatively impacting. This achieves its goal with real world first hand examples of individuality crushed.

I will use this source to give examples of a negative impact of standardized testing, killing individuality. Specifically I will use comparison of a fish trying to climb a tree. The fish is not lazy or not trying but it will never be able to climb the tree because it doesn’t have legs or arms. I will use this similar to how Dawn did to explain that students are stuck in a standardized testing based education system that is not working and not relevant for today’s society no matter how hard they try. 

Strauss, Valerie. “13 Ways High-Stakes Standardized Tests Hurt Students.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 24 Apr. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/10/13-ways-high-stakes-standardized-tests-hurt-students/. 

This article focuses solely on some of the many negative effects of standardized testing on education. Schools whose students do not perform well on the standardized tests, it states, are threatened with closure and decreased budgets. This makes teachers feel like they have to only teach to the test and nothing else. Adding an immense amount of pressure to students of all ages and not needed stress. It also describes the overall toxic environment of teaching to the test and fear of losing money and failing that standardized tests create. 

In her article, Strauss gives Jessie B. Ramey’s list of reasons as to why standardized testing is harmful. Ramey was a mother of two school aged children at the time of this article. This can skew Ramey’s bias on standardized testing based on her own children’s  negative experiences. This article does have a clear bias which does take away from its reliability. However, these examples are evidence of experiences with standardized tests. 

Despite there being a clear bias, I can still use this article as the start of my research. I can take the points of decrease in funding and over stressed students and expand my research on them to better understand them. I can also use this as evidence of what parents see happen to their students, schools, and education during the increased pressure of standardized testing. 

ProCon.org. “Do Standardized Tests Improve Education in America?” ProCon.org, 7 Dec. 2020, standardizedtests.procon.org/. 

ProCon.org gives evidence and support for the positive effects of standardized testing. It starts by briefly explaining the reason why standardized testing became popular and why it started to begin with. Stating that this type of testing has been around since the mid-1800s in America and increased in popularity after the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. Then it makes a list with several pros, that have been the reasons for continuation of these types of tests, and cons to contradict these pros. 

This article is from ProCon.org, a reliable nonpartisan organization, and does not have a bias. It presents the background for standardized tests and the pros and cons without leaning more to one side or the other. For every pro listed in favor of standardized tests, there is a con listed too, making the research balanced. The pros and cons listed are backed up by quotes from education organizations and data on schools. 

I will use this article to act as my examples in my rebuttal. The pros will serve as points where I can represent and reinforce why standardized testing does have more negative effects than positive. This article did make me see the other side of why standardized testing should be used and made my understanding of the topic stronger. Knowing that teachers use the tests to evaluate their students but they aren’t changed for different students’ learning styles of individualities further strengthens my argument that standardized tests have a more negative impact.