Every student in every state is familiar with standardized testing because every student has had to take a standardized test. This is because of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy introduced by President George W. Bush back in 2001. This was primarily introduced because on the international level, students from America were testing quite low, and this soon became a concern. However, after years of going through standardized testing, it seems to have placed much more of a negative effect than expected.

The concept of preparing students to take a test that assesses a student’s ability to show mastery upon certain educational standards seems that it would lead to an increase in numbers of students able to perform at the certain grade level or higher, but this is not the case. The original goal of standardized testing was to narrow the achievement gap, but a 2013 study by CEPA states that, “… no support for the hypothesis that NCLB had led, on average, to a narrowing of racial achievement gaps.” In addition to this, a 2012 study by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education has shown that not only have students’ scores failed to rise, but they’ve slightly decreased.

With this being said, all the lawmakers who have supported this proposition must now realize that the real test is to convince everyone that this works, or actually improving the implementation and fixing it.

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Shakeel Zia at [email protected].