Essay, Research Paper: Standardized Test

Standardized test have been a means measuring student performance. Some important questions that always come up regarding standardized test are what are the tests really measuring? Are they measuring a person’s intelligence? Their ability to perform well on standardized tests? Or just some random quantity of the person’s IQ? When examining the issues around which these tests are given and the content of the tests themselves, it becomes apparent that however useful the tests may be for standardizing a group’s intellectual ability, they are not a good indicator of intelligence.
To issue a truly standardized test, the testing environment should be the same for everyone involved. A person’s environment has a great deal to do with their cognitive abilities. Is the light flickering? Is the paint on the walls an unsettling shade? Is the temperature too hot or too cold? Is the chair uncomfortable? Or in the worst case, do they have an illness that day? To test a person’s mind, it is necessary to utilize their body in the process. If everyone’s body is placed in different conditions during the testing, how is it possible to get standardized results across all the subjects? Because of this assumption that everyone will perform equally independent of their environment, intelligence test scores are skewed and cannot be viewed as standardized, and definitely not as an example of a person’s intelligence.
A person’s intelligence stems from a variety of traits. Standardized test measure a few of these traits such as reading comprehension, vocabulary, and spatial relations. What about physical intelligence, conversational intelligence, social intelligence, survival intelligence, and the others that go into everyday life? Why are these important traits not figured into intelligence tests? Standardized tests certainly get predictable results where academics are concerned, but they should not be considered good indicators of general intelligence because of the omissions they make in the testing process. To really gauge a person’s intelligence, it would be necessary to put them through a rigorous set of real-life trials and document their performance. The standardized IQ tests of today are test only a limited quality of a person’s character that can hardly be referred to as intelligence. Standardized test also have no way to compensate for cultural differences. Different cultures have different methods of solving problems, and speediness is not always the best way to tackle a problem. Therefore the time limitations on standardized test are a major drawback.
The reasons that IQ tests fail at their task can be separated into two main groups. The first grouping is where the tests assume too much. Examples of this are the assumption that speed is always good, vocabulary is a good indicator of intelligence, and that different test taking environments won’t affect the outcome. The second grouping comes because the tests gauge the wrong items. Examples of this are different culture groups being asked to take the same tests as everyone else, and the fact that the tests ignore so many types of intelligence (like physical, social, etc). These two groupings illustrate where the major flaws of popular IQ tests occur and can be used as tools for judging others. Alternatives to standardized testing are in use in both the United States and other industrialized countries. Alternatives range from student portfolios, to district-wide "proficiencies," to outside review teams that evaluate a school. There is growing evidence that these measures do a better job of showing how well students and schools are performing.
IQ tests are not good indicators for a person’s overall intelligence, but their use is extremely helpful in making predictions about how a person will perform in an academic setting. Perhaps the problem comes in the name “intelligence tests” this is not what they really are. The modern IQ test definitely has its applications in today’s society but should not be used to quantify a person’s overall intelligence.



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