Standardized Testing is an Incorrect Way to Measure Human Intelligence By Teddy

Taking standardized tests drives me insane. To have your intelligence judged by how well you can repair purposely-incorrect grammar or by how well you can apply mathematics skills, which you will never need to use in your existence on this planet, is an insult to my knowledge. Succeeding on a four-hour test, against the clock, in utter silence sounds more like a survival of the fittest challenge than a “standardized” test. Along with that, the test does not measure what is meaningful about education; it measures the “basic” skills, which then makes the test a memory game restricting the incredible mind to the hippocampus (memory) part of the brain. In addition, the test uses multiple-choice questions, which are a poor yardstick to measure intelligence by. These reasons strongly display that Standardized Testing is not an effective way of measuring human intelligence.

Sitting in a testing room for 4 hours uncomfortably can cause a lack of mental stamina boredom, and fatigue which are all distractions restricting you to perform to your best mental ability. The conditions of your testing room have a significant effect on your scores. 

On the other hand, http://paperlineresearch.blogspot.com states that taking a standardized test in these conditions is fair because the same test is given to all test takers in a similar manner and, therefore, the consistency levels in this type of examination gives room for adequate comparison of the results across all test takers.  I disagree with this because a student’s score outcome could be altered without the ideal testing conditions, which would be a place where a student feels completely comfortable. www.pgagroup.com/psychometric-test-room.html tells us that lighting; room temperature, posture, and writing surfaces have a significant effect on test takers, which is plausible because of my personal experiences as a test taker.

As students, we attend school to learn and advance our educational level past the basic requirements we need to advance to a collegiate level. We tend to focus on topics and skillsets that we will use in our everyday lives, rather than study skills that will only be applied on a test that we take at maximum three times in our life. Standardized tests measure only a small portion of what makes education meaningful. Gerald Bracey of http://standardizedtests.procon.org/#pro_con tells us that  standardized tests cannot measure include someone’s "creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, resourcefulness, sense of beauty, sense of wonder, honesty, integrity." I do not understand how you can judge somebody’s intelligence after all of these elements have been taken away from them. Stuart S. Yeh from the Education Policy Analysis Archives, tells us that standardized testing is focused it on important basic skills all students need to master. I disagree with this because with the creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, resourcefulness, sense of beauty, sense of wonder, honesty and integrity, students would be able to supply raw intelligence that allows the mind to flow and compose, rather than regurgitate old supplemental material that are the “basics” of learning.

Multiple-choice questions are a poor yardstick to measure student achievement http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/courses/teachers_corner/40990.html states that,  "Multiple-choice items are best used for checking whether students have learned facts and routine procedures that have one, clearly correct answer."

On the other hand, test directions usually ask test takers to select the “best” answer. If, on a reading test, a student selected a somewhat plausible answer, does it mean that they cannot read, or that they do not see things exactly the way the test maker does? Choosing the “best answer” now becomes a matter of opinion, and forcing students to choose an A,B,C, or D limits the precision and range of the test takers knowledge.

Standardized testing cannot possibly measure a person’s intelligence due to these realistic reasons. Sitting uncomfortably for four hours in a room can cause a lack of mental stamina, boredom, and fatigue creates distractions restricting you to perform to your best ability. Standardized tests measure only a small portion of what makes education meaningful. And the multiple-choice questions are a poor indicator of student achievement. There are better ways to measure a student’s intelligence such as good teacher observation, documentation of student work, and performance-based assessment, all of which involve the direct evaluation of real learning tasks rather than taking a tedious, time consuming test which limit the intelligence of the mind to four letter choices in which only one of them has the “best” answer.  The raw truth is that some people may be smarter than others, but your intelligence should not be judged by the results of a paper test. This “Standardized Testing” is the inferior way to measure intelligence.

1.           "2013 Trends in Higher Education Series." College Admissions. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. <http://www.collegeboard.com>. (

2.           "PAPERLINE RESEARCH." PAPERLINE RESEARCH. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. <http://paperlineresearch.blogspot.com/>

3.           "PGA Group Consulting Psychologists - Results That Make A Difference." PGA Group Consulting Psychologists - Results That Make A Difference. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. <http://www.pgagroup.com>.

4.           "Standardized Tests - ProCon.org." ProConorg Headlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. <http://standardizedtests.procon.org/#pro_con>.