Like thousands of other high school students across the country, my younger sister will begin another long awaited week of PARCC testing – or Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exam in a few weeks. The exam, which has been met with controversy and criticism in virtually every state it's been introduced in, has been a topic at school constantly recently. What is the test for? What does it measure? Why did we switch over from the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System exam (DC-CAS)? These are questions that are being asked in schools not only in DC but around the country.
In 2014, District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) replaced the almost decade old DC-CAS exam with PARCC. The switch from DC-CAS was anticipated by many as the exam had been met with mounting criticism from both educators and parents in the last few years. Although many at first encouraged the switch in the District, there has still been significant criticism towards the new test. This negative response has not only been seen in DC but all over the country.
The uproar across the country towards the exam has been increasingly prevalent as thousands of educators, parents and students have begun to stage mass protests in cities across the country - especially in strong teacher union cities like Chicago. In New York City alone, 175,000 students have chosen to opt out of the PARCC test with many more expected to follow behind as the testing date nears. These numbers are significantly higher than those seen in previous years, and have brought on an even more of critical analysis towards the role of testing in schools. The PARCC exam is just one of the many additions to the several mandated tests and exams that students are put through every year. DCPS in particular has seen constant change in standardized testing recently and has been host to three different types of standardized exams in the last five years.
Standardized testing is an attribute of the American educational system that is constantly under heavy critique. Despite the amount of standardized exams students throughout the country go through every year the ranking of American students internationally has not increased significantly in decades. Many have identified ‘over testing’ as the reason as to why American students are falling so far behind, which has opened a new debate as to whether or not testing helps or hurts students.
Unlike the United States, many nations have followed a decreasing trend when it comes to the number of standardized tests students take each year. In nations like Finland, who scored in the highest percentiles for both reading and writing on the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA (a test used to track educational trends around the world) have adopted strong ‘anti-standardized’ policies in recent years.
Schools in Finland promote creative thinking over memorization and emphasize a culture that is focused more on how you interpret over how much you know. Finland has one of the strongest policies towards standardized tests--the small Northern European country has banned standardized tests for all students in recent years. This model has worked extremely well for the country and their students and the educational trends in Finland have been on an upward track for the last few years.
While completely eliminating standardized tests in American schools might be far away from where we as a country are at education wise, it is still worth examining. It is clear that standardized testing in America is a broken system. As a country, we have to reevaluate how much these tests effectively change and impact our educational standards and ability. When looking at how we compete internationally - a nation heavy on standardized testing - with a nation like Finland who has banned standardized testing a clear message can be deciphered. The United States will continue to follow a downward trend in terms of education if we do not wake up and smell the flowers, and realize that a change has to be made.
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