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Alex Ricciardi
Professor Kirstin Dobson
English 1010.200
April 20, 2022
Standardized and High-Stakes Academic Testing Are Inaccurate and Detrimental to Students
Sitting at my desk, worried, I was in pain. My stomach was cramping and growling;
anxiety was in control, not me. I was incapacitated; answering the test questions correctly
seemed out of reach. My memory was failing me, and time was running out. Anxiety won; I
failed my math test, and at that moment, I realized that academic success was out of reach for
me. Now, at fifty years old, I changed my mind and am attending college. In my English class, as
an assignment, I created a questionnaire on the reliability of standardized academic tests and
their influence on the students’ anxiety and stress levels. I used it to survey my classmates. In the
survey, unanimously, my classmates answered that standardized and high-stakes questionanswer tests do not accurately measure a student’s academic abilities. Eight out of ten reported
experiencing high to severe anxiety and stress levels before and during tests and some anxiety
and stress after taking a test. Furthermore, eight out of ten agreed with the statement, “in many
ways timed question-answer tests are harmful to students.” Dr. Betsy A. Gunzelmann, a wellrenowned psychology professor, stated that the current approach to academic testing in school is
inaccurate and even harmful for many students (“Toxic Testing” 1). In the light of it, I made my
goal to advocate for an educational system that is not detrimental to students. A system that is
less about standards and more about individuality, starting by changing the way students’
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academic abilities are measured. To begin with, standardized and high-stakes tests do not
accurately reflect individual students’ academic abilities and knowledge, but portfolio and
project-based assessments do accurately reflect it. Secondly, standardized and high-stakes testing
can harm student well-being and students from low-income families. In contracts, portfolio and
project-based assessments allow students to be more individual and creative, no matter their
family income. Despite the fact that standardized and high-stakes testing are shown to be
detrimental to students, the government and educational institutions heavily rely on them, based
on an erroneous advertised belief that standardized and high-stakes testing are the only fair and
accurate methods to measure individual students’ academic abilities. Nevertheless, there are
defenders of standardized and high-stakes testing who argue that standardized and high-stakes
testing are valid tools for the government and educational institutions to measure students’
learning and academic abilities.
Figure: 1. “All Test Scores.” College Board, August 29, 2012.
A graphic representation of all standardized test scores versus
the students’ family income, 2012.
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To begin with, high-stakes testing is not a reliable or accurate tool to measure individual
students’ academic abilities and knowledge. On the other hand, portfolio and project-based
assessments paint a better picture of students’ achievements and abilities. Many studies have
shown that high-stake tests are unreliable and distorted measurements of students’ knowledge
and abilities. In contrast, many academic scholars argue that portfolio and project-based
assessments are valuable and dependable tools to evaluate students’ achievements, academic
abilities, and knowledge. In their article “Education High-stakes Testing,” Gail Jones and Megan
Ennes discuss research findings showing that test preparation distorts high-stakes results leading
to invalid interpretations of learning gains (“Education High-stakes Testing” 1). Dr. Betsy A.
Gunzelmann argues in her article “Toxic Testing: It’s Time to Reflect upon Our Current Testing
Practices” that standardized and high-stakes testing give the illusion of being scientific, but in
reality, they are a measurement of unsophisticated kind of knowledge, and a shallow
measurement of learning rather than a measurement of deep understanding (“Toxic Testing” 4).
In the same article, she also explains that portfolio and project-based assessments can
demonstrate students’ level of knowledge, their strengths, and weaknesses (“Toxic Testing” 6).
She gives the example of Noel, a student with high intelligence scores but diagnosed with a
learning disability. In elementary school, she was academically behind her peers, reading and
writing did not come easy. However, through portfolio and project assessments in college, she
was allowed to demonstrate her true academic abilities and graduated college with honors
(“Toxic Testing” 7). I can relate to Noel’s story. I failed school; I should say more accurately
that high-stakes testing failed me. Growing up in France, I was marginalized by a system
promoting high-stakes testing as the only measurement of academic achievements, a system that
effectively closed any opportunity for me to pursue higher education. However, a year ago, I
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decided to get my HiSET, High School Equivalency Test, through the Laramie County
Community College (LCCC), Adult Career and Education System (ACES). With English being
my fourth language and with a history of academic failure, I had little hope that I would succeed.
To my great surprise, I did not just succeed but was awarded a membership in the National Adult
Education Honor Society. Encouraged by this, I decided to pursue a college education. After
talking to a college counselor, I was tested and diagnosed with a learning disability. Like Noel,
the psychological evaluation showed high intelligence scores. Now, at fifty years old, I am a fulltime straight-A second-semester student enrolled in the STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics) program at LCCC. I am the perfect example of someone that
standardized and high-stakes testing failed in high school, and portfolio and project-based
assessments are allowing to succeed in college. Thus, standardized and high-stakes testing do not
accurately reflect individual students’ potential academic abilities and knowledge; they are a
mediocre measurement of students’ educational states. In contrast, portfolio and project-based
assessments accurately reflect individual students’ learning, potential, and strengths.
Secondly, standardized and high-stakes tests can be harmful to students’ mental health
and prejudicial to students from low incomes families. On the other hand, portfolio and projectbased assessments allow students to express individuality and creativity. It is well known and
documented that high-stakes testing is a source of anxiety and stress for students and is
detrimental to students from low-income families. It is also documented that low scores on tests
can affect the self-esteem and confidence of students. In comparison, portfolio and project-based
assessments are known to boost students’ self-esteem and confidence, are a source of less stress
and anxiety than high-stakes tests, and are less prejudicial to students from low-income families.
In her article, Dr. Gunzelmann discusses how toxic or harmful high-stakes testing can be for
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some students, and she lists the consequences of high-stakes testing as test anxiety, lowered selfesteem, misunderstanding of children, teaching to test, and mis-opportunities for students
(“Toxic Testing” 2). John Sweeney, the co-chair of the Delaware Governor's Social Studies
Curriculum Frameworks Commission 1992-95, argues in his 2014 article “Put an End to
Harmful High-Stakes Student Testing” that even if standardized tests have their place in
education, high-stakes tests are also potentially harmful to students (“Put an End to Harmful
High-Stakes Student Testing” 2). Moreover, Figure 1, “All Test Scores” from the College Board,
a nonprofit organization driven to connect students to college success and opportunity, clearly
shows a correlation between standardized test scores and students’ family income. A correlation
where the lower the income is, the lower test scores are. Therefore, hurting students from lowincome families by keeping them from accessing most prestigious universities, which based their
student admissions on standardized tests scores. In contrast, Dr. Gunzelmann argues, in her
article, that portfolio assessments can help students to take responsibility for their learning and
pride in their accomplishments, helping the individual students and the teachers to pinpoint the
students’ unique strengths and weaknesses. She also reinforces the concept that portfolio and
project-based assessments help to elevate students’ self-esteem and confidence (“Toxic Testing”
6), and I will add ‘no matter the student’s family income.’ In fact, as a child, I experienced the
disabling effects of test anxiety and stress and the low self-esteem and self-confidence created by
low tests scores. Furthermore, being from a low-income family with an undiagnosed learning
disability, I felt the full force of the prejudice created by standardized and high-stakes testing.
Now, in college, where projects assessments are part of the grading system, I am succeeding and
gaining back my self-esteem and self-confidence lost long ago. Thus, standardized and highstakes tests are a catalyst of low self-esteem and low self-confidence to students who fail them,
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and they are a source of high stress and anxiety for most students. Overall, they are detrimental
to students’ well-being and students from low-income families. On the other hand, portfolio and
project-based assessments allow students to be more individual, creative, take responsibility for
their learning, and pride in their accomplishments.
Despite all the studies and research showing the
low reliability, prejudices, and negative effects of
standardized and high-stakes testing, the government,
K-12 education, and most universities still rely heavily
on it as a tool to measure the performance of schools,
students’ learning, and the suitability of individual
students to pursue high education. Standardized and
high-stakes testing is anchored on an erroneous
advertised belief that standardized and high-stakes
Figure: 2. Glasbergen, Randy. “Pinguin
Logic.” Glasbergen cartoon, May 10,
2002.20 April 2022.
testing are the only fair and accurate methods to measure individual students’ academic abilities.
This erroneous belief resides in an academic testing fallacy. Figure 2, a zany depiction of a
penguin’s thoughts about what it means to be a black and white penguin, summarizes well this
logical fallacy. That is, that all students are in school, so they are all the same, so by consequence
standardized and high-stakes testing are valuable and reliable measurements of all students’
academic abilities. This could be true if all students were identical in the way they learn, how test
anxiety affects them, and how their environment influences them, but they are not. If the penguin
took the time to look further into what old TV shows are, he would probably realize that
penguins are definitely not TV shows. The logical fallacy portrayed in Figure 2 can be further
defined as a hasty generalization, that is a fallacious generalization based on an insufficient
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amount of information. Therefore, depicting standardized and high-stakes testing as fair and
accurate methods to measure all the students’ academic abilities because all the students are
attending school, is a fallacious generalization of who the students are. They are individuals that
learn differently, have different levels of test anxiety, and are affected differently by their
environments.
Furthermore, in their article “Standardized Testing: Fair or Not? “ Dr. John Poulsen and
Kurtis Hewson argue that even though standardized testing and high-stakes testing have a place
in today’s education, “they have issues especially related to situational/environmental factors,
personal/emotional factors, and grade-spread requirement that may make applicability difficult to
ascertain.” They added that standardized tests are weak in predicting correctly how much a
specific student has learned (Standardized Testing: Fair or Not?” 8). Those statements reinforce
the argument that the extolled belief promoting standardized and high-stakes testing as accurate
methods to assess students’ academic abilities is erroneous. I am proof of it, even though
standardized and high-stakes testing failed me as a child, project-based assessments allow me to
excel in college. Besides, the reason I failed in my pre-college education, is because I did not fit
the mold of standardized and high-stakes testing, the truth is that few children or teenagers fit the
mold well. Thus, it is a hasty generalization to advertise or to think that standardized and highstakes testing are valuable, reliable, accurate, and fair methods to measure students’ academic
abilities.
Nonetheless, there are defenders of standardized and high-stakes testing, they believe that
standardized and high-stakes testing are a beneficial tool for educational institutions, teachers,
students, and for the government to assess students’ learning and academic abilities. Perhaps,
standardized and high-stakes testing to some extent is a beneficial tool for the government,
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teachers, and educational institutions to have a partial understanding of the students’ learning and
academic abilities. It is worth emphasizing that the understanding is partial to mediocre, not
accurate, and if used as a valid measurement of students’ suitability to pursue higher education,
they are detrimental to the students. Looking back on the history of standardized testing, in 1904,
the French government commissioned Alfred Binet and his student Theodore Simon to develop
an intelligence test to weed out children who would not benefit from traditional schools (“Toxic
Testing” 4). Bear in mind that the test was not developed to help the children, but was developed
to weed them out, and it was prejudicial to the children. This test was also adopted by the U.S
and other western countries. The current understanding of standardized testing was influenced by
the need of the Industrial Revolution when students were moved out of the workforce and into
schools, and a need to test large numbers of children developed (“Standardized Testing: Fair or
Not?” 4). It is worth noting that the need is not a children need, but a government need, and
sequentially was unfair to the children. “By definition, testing becomes high stakes when the
outcomes are used to make decisions about promotion, admissions, graduation, and salaries.” For
schools with high or improved performance in standardized testing results typically translate to
monetary rewards, and for schools that underperform, it translates to penalties that may result in
the replacement of administrators or teachers (“Education High-stakes Testing” 1). Therefore,
for the government, standardized and high-stakes testing are more about the allocation and the
distribution of monetary funds than individual students’ needs. Moreover, standardized and highstakes testing are not accurate, they are prejudicial and unfair to students.
Even so, in their article “The Benefits of Regular Standardized Assessment in Childhood
Education: Guiding Improved Instruction and Learning,” Gavin T. L. Brown and John Hattie
argue that standardized and high-stakes testing are reliable, a valid tool for curriculum
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calibration, and can provide information and interpretations to teachers and students (“The
Benefits of Regular Standardized Assessment in Childhood Education” 4). Their erroneous
assumption is rooted in the definition of standardized itself. In the belief that if students take the
same test at the same time, on the same day, in the same place, with the same allocated amount
of time, and are scored in the same manner, the test results are unbiased, accurate and valid. But
as previously discussed in this essay, they are not reliable, accurate, and fair, because students
are not identical in the way they learn, how test anxiety affects them, and how their environment
influences them. In elementary school, I was relentlessly bombarded into believing that
standardized and high-stakes testing were the only valid measurement of my academic ability,
they were indeed for the government, not for me. For a long time, they effectively prevented me
from accessing higher education. But now in college, I disproved the assumption that
standardized and high-stakes testing are the only measurement of my academic ability, by
succeeding in college. Thus, the argument made that standardized and high-stakes testing are
beneficial to students, is wrong. Besides, they are mediocre measurements of the students’
learning and academic abilities. In fact, standardized and high-stakes testing were invented to
further the goals of the government, not to further the goals of individual students, and it is
utilized to weed out students from accessing certain universities. Overall standardized and highstakes testing are not beneficial to students, they are inaccurate, unfair, and detrimental to them.
To summarize, my goal is to advocate for an educational system that is not detrimental to
students. A system that is less about standards and more about individuality, starting by changing
the way students’ academic abilities are measured. To begin with, studies have shown that
standardized and high-stakes testing do not accurately reflect individual students’ academic
abilities and knowledge. In contrast, portfolio and project-based assessments have been proven to
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accurately reflect individual students’ learning, potential, strengths, and weaknesses. Secondly,
research has revealed that standardized and high-stakes tests are a vehicle for low self-esteem
and low self-confidence, they are a source of high stress and anxiety, are harmful to students’
well-being, and are detrimental to students from low-income families. On the other hand,
portfolio and project-based assessments allow students to be more individual, creative, take
responsibility for their learning, and pride in their accomplishments. Despite all the negative
effects revealed by studies and research on standardized and high-stakes testing, they are still
advertised as valuable tools to measure students’ learning, academic abilities, and the suitability
of individual students to pursue higher education. Besides, it is a logical fallacy to think that
standardized and high-stakes testing are valuable, reliable, accurate, and fair methods to measure
students’ academic abilities. Nonetheless, the argument made that standardized and high-stakes
testing are beneficial to students, is wrong, they were invented to further the goals of the
government, not to further the goals of individual students, and they are utilized to weed out
students from accessing certain universities. Overall standardized and high-stakes testing are not
valuable, beneficial, reliable, accurate, and fair tools to measure students’ learning and academic
abilities. They are harmful and prejudicial to students. Conclusively, standardized and highstakes testing should not be utilized as a reliable means of evaluating students’ learning and
academic abilities. Favor for that purpose should be given to portfolio and project-based
assessments.
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Works Cited
Brown, Gavin T. L. and Hattie John. “The Benefits of Regular Standardized Assessment in
Childhood Education: Guiding Improved Instruction and Learning.” The University of
Melbourne, January 2012. 20 April 2022.
Ennes, Megan and Jones, Gail. “Education High-stakes Testing.” Oxford University Press,
04/21/2021. 20 April 2022.
Gunzelmann, Betzy, Ed.D., Chair of Psychology at Southern New Hampshire University. “Toxic
Testing: It’s Time to Reflect upon Our Current Testing Practices.” Educational Horizons,
Spring 2005.20 April 2022.
Hewson, Kurtis and Poulsen, John Dr. “Standardized Testing: Fair or Not?” University of
Lethbridge, 2014. 20 April 2022
Sweeney, John. “Put an End to Harmful High-Stakes Student Testing.” Ludden Library
04/20/2014. 20 April 2022.