Summary Portion of Essay #3

Here is my summary portion!

Brief history about standardized testing shows they didn't always exist. The mid-nineteenth century is when these tests were first used. Between World War II and the 1960s standardized test were used just to examine students’ academic progress (Crone). Today the United States not only uses them to examine students but to also judge how good the teachers are doing. Since the students and teachers are now held accountable for these tests they adopted a nickname, high-stake tests (Crone). The No Child Left Behind Act, signed on January 8^th 2002, orders standardized testing in math and reading for students in grades three through eight (Crone). This Act raised the stakes for students and teachers around the country. What Theodore Crone was arguing was “How can we distinguish the schools contribution to these test scores from the effects of students innate abilities, their family social life, economic background, and peers in the classroom (Crone).” Crone argued that standardized tests like the ACT, which have a writing portion, cannot be scored equally. There are thousands of different people that read the writing portion and score off of what they think. When the scored read the test they see the students full information filled out on the test, this brings up issues with a student’s demographic background. Some say that the race of a student could affect their score.  The scoring process for these very important tests that could be the make or break of your admission to college are simply unfair. A major reason to why these tests are so controversial is rich versus poor. How is it fair to compare scores of a student that could afford a private tutor and could afford to retake the test 5 times, to a student that did not receive extra help outside of school and could only afford the free test the school provided once? Money has a lot to do with our public education now and it isn't fair when it comes down to standardized tests. The jobs teachers are doing are also evaluated on the student’s score of standardized tests. Teachers are also brought in the argument of unfair scoring. No teacher teaches the exact same. It’s a proven fact that some teachers are better than others (Crone). When there are lower scores in one state compared to another something should be done.  Crone a professor himself knows that these test are an unfair judgment of a student’s academic abilities.