Are standardized tests effective?

Too many decisions rely on the outcome of standardized tests

Question: Are standardized tests effective?
Position‹2 of 2: Standardized tests are not effective
Argument‹2 of 2: Too many decisions rely on the outcome of standardized tests

From teacher tenure to student promotion to the next grade, way too much relies on only one form of national student assessment.

The argument

On this view the problem is not only what standardized tests measure but how much weight the education system places on the measurement. In America especially, a single set of scores is treated as the common currency of the system: teacher tenure, school evaluations, a student's promotion to the next grade level, and eligibility to graduate high school are all determined by performance on standardized tests. Each of those decisions is consequential and largely irreversible for the person it lands on, and each is settled by the same narrow instrument. Critics argue that this concentration of stakes produces unfairness even before the accuracy of the tests is questioned. Punishing teachers because some of their students perform poorly on a standardized test is, on this analogy, the equivalent of a coach punishing an entire athletics class for something one person does: the sanction falls on people whose contribution to the result cannot be separated from everything else shaping it. A teacher does not control which students arrive in the classroom, what they bring with them, or how any one of them performs on any given day. The second step compounds the first. If standardized tests are not an accurate measure of intelligence or knowledge, then the scores attached to all these decisions are a poor proxy for the quality they are supposed to represent, and it makes no sense to base teacher tenure and evaluations on the results. An inaccurate instrument used for a minor purpose is a small problem; the same instrument used to decide careers, institutional reputations, and whether a student advances or graduates converts its inaccuracy into consequences that run through the whole system. Proponents conclude that a testing regime asked to carry that much weight cannot be called effective, whatever it happens to measure well.

Premises

[P1]In America, standardized tests determine teacher tenure, school evaluations, student promotion, and graduation eligibility—far too much hinges on a single result. [P2] Because the tests are not an accurate measure of intelligence or knowledge, penalising teachers for some students' poor scores is unjust and illogical. [C] Therefore, because too many decisions rely on their outcome, standardized tests are not effective.

Counter-arguments

How else is the government, state and federal, supposed to be able to decide if a student is eligible to advance to the next grade or graduation? To evaluate teacher performance and adjust their tenure accordingly? Standardized tests offer the only source of objective measurement in order to make these decisions.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P5] Regardless of this, standardized tests are still the best way to compare students and teachers.