Children

Testing for Intelligence?

This assignment was difficult for me because I don’t necessary agree with the school aged standardized testing.  I feel as though it is not fair for a child to go through the entire school year and make passing grades and then to take a test and fail and have to repeat the grade.  My 17 year old daughter just took the ACT test for college prep and made a 17.  She is a straight A student but unless she retakes the test and gets a higher score she will not be able to attend certain colleges.

The country I researched is Taiwan. Some of the negative effects that high-stakes testing have had on their children include having extreme stress and a lower self-esteem.  The suicide rate among Taiwanese students is high and comparable to their Japanese counterparts, whom also share similar rigorous standardized testing system (“Haynes and Chalker, 1997).  Therefore, this shows us that having such high academic expectations can be detrimental as they can drive students to the point of depression and even death.  Perhaps this is where schools and families should intervene in order to ensure that the stress does not reach to a dangerous level.  

Although students in the U.S. might not be as affected with the negative effects of standardized testing, America does pay a price.  Despite being one of the richest, most influential countries in the world, American students have rarely scored high compared to other nations.  For example, on a mathematics tests for 13-year-olds, U.S. students on the whole ranked 14th while Taiwan ranked in the top two, with average scores more than 20 points higher than in the U.S. (Bushweller, 1996). 

Bushweller, K. (1996). International Comparisons: How Do U.S.   Schools Stack Up? And Are World Rankings Really Fair and Accurate? Retrieved December 06, 2013, from http://www.asbj.com/achievement/aa/aa2.html. 

Haynes, R. & Chalker, D. (1997). World-Class Schools. The American School Board Journal, 184 (5),20-26.