Are standardized tests effective?

Standardized testing allows for consistent assessment

Question: Are standardized tests effective?
Position1 of 2›: Standardized tests are effective
Argument‹2 of 2: Standardized testing allows for consistent assessment

With the sheer number of students in the country and the varying differences in each school, standardized tests are necessary to accurately gather data.

The argument

The case for standardised tests made here is comparative rather than absolute: the tests are defended not as a perfect measure of a student but as the only measure that means the same thing from one school to the next. The problem they address is the variability of human judgment. Every teacher has their own view of how to evaluate student work accurately. One teacher may give a student's literature paper top marks while another sees room for improvement — on the same paper. Teachers are human, which means they carry implicit biases in how they think, and there is no way to make every teacher evaluate work identically. This is not a criticism of teachers but a description of what marking is: an informed judgment, and therefore a judgment that differs between the people making it. Standardised tests are where that variability stops. Teacher evaluations leave room for personal discretion in measuring student success; a standardised test applies the same questions and the same scoring to everyone who sits it, and so offers a strictly objective measurement. The need for such a measure is clearest at the point where students from different schools are compared. When colleges and universities review applications, it is not fair to compare the grades and GPA of a student from a low-income public school district with those of a student from a college preparatory school that costs more than the college being applied to. The two transcripts may carry the same numbers while representing quite different demands, and nothing on the page reveals the difference. Without a common measure, an admissions officer is left comparing figures produced by incomparable processes. Standardised tests supply that common measure, giving an objective comparison for students across the country. Because standardised testing allows for consistent assessment in this way, the argument concludes, standardised tests are effective.

Premises

[P1]Teachers are human and bring implicit biases, so the same student work can earn very different grades from different teachers. [P2] Standardised tests replace that personal discretion with a strictly objective measurement. [P3] This lets colleges fairly compare students across very different schools, which grades alone cannot. [C] Therefore, because standardised testing allows for consistent assessment, standardised tests are effective.

Counter-arguments

Standardized tests aren't a good measure of intelligence. They measure only how well a student can study and memorize information pro rata, not how intelligent they are.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Standardized tests are not a good test of intelligence.