Are standardized tests effective?

Standardized tests provide opportunities for students

Question: Are standardized tests effective?
Position1 of 2›: Standardized tests are effective
Argument1 of 2›: Standardized tests provide opportunities for students

For students in large schools, standardized tests act as a way for particularly motivated students to stand out among the crowd.

The argument

Standardized testing allows for certain students to stand out from the crowd. Even at a public school with thousands of students, highly motivated students who perform well on those tests are more able to stand out than they would be otherwise, because a test score is legible on its own — it does not require an admissions officer to know anything about the school it came from. That matters most where a school has little else to offer. The tests provide an opportunity for students to show off, so to speak, especially if their school doesn't offer opportunities for distinguishable achievements such as Advanced Placement (AP) classes, International Baccalaureate curriculum, or dual-credit classes. A student at a well-resourced school can demonstrate ambition through the courses on their transcript; a student whose school never offered those courses has no comparable way to show it. The standardized test supplies one that does not depend on what the school happened to provide. The same logic applies to class rank. Standardized tests also help distinguish students who didn't place high in their class rankings. In America, several colleges put huge emphasis on what a student's class ranking is when considering college applications, and the exclusive colleges tend to look at the top 10% of students. This would seem like a fair assessment of a student's achievements, but the measure is relative rather than absolute, and it can distort in either direction. What if the student's school has a large percentage of talented classmates, so that strong work still lands outside the top tenth? Or what if the class size is very small, making the top 10% composed of just a handful of students? In both cases the ranking describes the cohort as much as the candidate. Standardized tests allow for students in that position to stand out without being in the top 10%.

Context

Standardized tests have been around for quite awhile. Written exams were originally introduced in European education in the 18th century after the Jesuits had discovered the concept in China. Adding written exams into the curriculum was meant to increase difficulty and competitiveness. In the 1840s, America followed suit, giving written exams in the place of the typical oral examinations of the time. 1900 saw the establishment of the College Entrance Examination Board. Fast forward 120 years and most developed countries have some form of standardized tests.

Premises

[P1]Many students lack access to distinguishing opportunities like AP, IB, or dual-credit classes, and class rankings can unfairly disadvantage students at competitive or very small schools. [P2] Standardized tests give all students a common metric on which to demonstrate achievement and stand out to colleges regardless of their school's offerings or ranking quirks. [C] Therefore, standardized tests are effective because they provide valuable opportunities for students to be recognized.

Counter-arguments

Standardized tests are meant to be an assessment of intelligence. While the tests do offer an opportunity for students to stand out, it's the students who're intelligent in test-taking. It rewards students who are good at test-taking and punishes those who are not.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Standardized testing isn't the sole measurement of student success.