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What's up, Titans? We're the Goldfishers, the podcast that explores the most hotly debated topics around the world. I'm your host, Ryan, and in today's episode, we'll be diving into the world of standardized testing. Kicking things off, I'm passing the mic over to Krislyn, who supports the testing system. Hi, my name's Krislyn. Today, I'm going to be talking about the testing system. The standardized testing has a long history within the United States, and a large factor of its long existing is the benefits that can be found from using them. They eliminate the possibility of grading bias that may be caused by a teacher's strictness or bias towards a particular student. Through using the same set of standardized for all youth, they are serving as equality factors in college admissions. Leveling the playing field between different social classes. Now, Matthew would like to argue against standardized testing. Hello, I'm Matthew, and I will be talking about the issues with standardized testing. Although standardized testing has its benefits, it also has a strong negative impact on education in the United States. This is because it does not accurately measure a student's learning length. The results can easily be affected by outside factors such as personal life, stress, or financial status, and they do not allow room for flexibility for teachers since they are forced to teach a certain way. Teaching standardized testing concepts also reduces the amount of time for foundational learning for higher level concepts. Now, Annie will present the first reason as to why standardized testing is beneficial to education in the United States. Hi, everyone. I'm Annie, and again, I will be arguing in favor of standardized testing. According to research done by Preston Cooper and the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, the general consensus was that standardized tests such as the ACT and SAT do help education in the United States by allowing otherwise disadvantaged students to stand out from their peers. What I mean by this is that universities typically tend to favor wealthier students who have more access to extracurriculars and college advisors in high school. Standardized testing allows lower income students with high SAT and ACT scores to be more recognized and considered by admissions officers. In other words, standardized tests are solely a reflection of a student's academic skill, not a representation of their legacy, race, or class. With that being said, if universities based admissions on these tests, more underrepresented students would get a chance to receive better education fit to their skill level and needs. Now Miles is going to continue. Hello, my name is Miles, and I will also be arguing in favor of standardized testing. Aaron Churchill, a research director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who has a focus on educational policy within his state of Ohio, argues that there are three major reasons why standardized testing is important, which he shares in the aptly named Bless the Tests, three reasons for standardized testing article. These three reasons are objectivity, comparability, and accountability. To put his argument simply, standardized tests are objective ways to measure what students know when classroom standards may vary teacher to teacher, are ways to compare both individual and school-wide performance in testing, and hold lower-ranking schools accountable to possibly under-educate. To put his argument simply, standardized testing is a... I'll take a quick pause. I need someone else to listen on this to what's going, what is appearing, and I think, can I take those for a second? Thank you. I thought you had those on. Yeah. No worries. Hello? Hello, I'm Miles, and I'm also arguing in favor of standardized tests. Aaron Churchill, a research director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who has a focus on standardized educational policy within his state of Ohio, argues that there are three major reasons why standardized tests are important, which he shares in the aptly named Bless the Tests, three reasons for standardized testing. The three reasons he talks about are objectivity, comparability, and accountability. To put his argument into simple words, he's arguing that standardized tests are important because they are objective ways to measure a student's success, where, teacher by teacher, grades could be influenced by how strict or lax they are with grading, by how easy or difficult their assignments are, and other factors, like favoritism. Another, one of the other reasons that he argues is that it puts both individual performance and school-wide performance up for people to look over, so that we can see if a student is doing above or below the average in the school, and above or below average within a classroom or in a statewide setting, which helps measure a student's success. And finally, it shows which schools may be under-educating their students, which could have bad effects. And by finding which schools are under-educating these students, we're able to protect our students, because in order to help the students, we need ways to identify which schools don't have education as their number one priority. And if we want our students to succeed, we need to guarantee the school they're put into by their district will lead to success. Academic success starts in the school that the students are put into, and standardized tests can help ensure the quality of education. Now, Annie will conclude our argument. So, basically, standardized testing does help improve education in America by opening opportunities for lower-income students that would have otherwise been looked over due to other factors such as race, class, and legacy. And according to Miles, Miles' research, standardized testing helps improve education in America by allowing the students to be judged against an objective standard that's free from bias that could have otherwise been influenced by teacher, classroom setting, school setting, and other outside environmental factors. Now, on to Mason, who will be arguing against standardized testing. Hi. So, I'm Mason, and I'll be arguing against standardized testing, specifically discussing how standardized tests within mathematics are not effective in younger grade levels in the U.S. Children in the early years of their life have very impressionable minds, and the environment and the way they're taught conditions the brain to learn in a certain way. And standardized testing within mathematics is shown to be ineffective in evaluating students' past grade levels 3 and above. This can be seen within a peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of Studies and Educational Evaluation. A one-size-fits-all test often does not do a good job because each student has a different way of understanding concepts and completing problems. Having tests that are not considerate of the way students are taught can lead to inaccurate data, as it will not be a true representation of their knowledge and understanding. It even extends to the teacher themselves, feeling pressured to have students excel and meet a certain threshold, which can cause a change of teaching approach to accommodate for standardized testing and focus on the problems, but reduce their amount of time on developing conceptual understanding. To put it simply, less of a focus on why a solution solves a problem. Hey, it's me, Ryan, again, and I'll be arguing against testing. Often before taking a test, many students face test anxiety. Test anxiety is an emotional response before taking a test, which stems from the excessive worrying and fear of failing. Symptoms of this could be faster heartbeat, nervousness, faster breathing, and butterflies in your stomach. This constant worrying and stress can contribute to a loss of concentration and, evidently, result in poor test scores. High levels of anxiety can also cause difficult cognitive functioning, which we need since it is essential to problem-solving and critical thinking skills to perform. Oh, shoot. I'm going to restart that. Hey, again, it's me, Ryan, and I'll be arguing against testing. Often before taking a test, many students face test anxiety. Test anxiety is an emotional response before taking a test. Symptoms of this could be faster heartbeat, nervousness, faster breathing, and butterflies in your stomach. This constant worrying and stress can contribute to a loss of concentration and critical thinking skills to perform. Hey, again, it's me, Ryan, and I'll be arguing against testing. Often before taking a test, many students face test anxiety. Test anxiety is an emotional response before taking a test, which stems from the excessive worrying and fear of failing. Symptoms of this could be faster heartbeat, nervousness, faster breathing, and butterflies in your stomach. This constant worrying and stress can contribute to a loss of concentration and, evidently, result in high levels of anxiety can also cause difficult cognitive functioning, which we need since problem-solving skills and critical thinking skills are essential to performing well on tests. The most vulnerable students to test anxiety are the perfectionists. Students with a perfectionist mindset often struggle to accept mistakes and fear failure. When measuring the test results of schools based on one major test, there are many external factors that can hinder student performance, which is why standardized testing doesn't actually measure a student's knowledge. Okay. So, the overall emphasis of arguments that oppose standardized testing are that not all students respond in a perfect and unaffected way to give an accurate representation of their understandings of concepts. There are many factors that affect the way a student handles testing, from having to adapt to testing methods, concepts, and verbiage that differs from their own, to having their own mental battles of performing well. These reasons contribute to why we believe standardized testing is not an effective way to represent represent students' knowledge. And now for our speed date. Oh, shoot. I already said it. Okay. Try not to cringe, guys. And now for the, oh, my God. I need to write it out. Can you pause it real quick? I have one in my head. Hey, guys. It's Krislyn, and to kick off our speed debate, I have Annie here to start it off. So, to the side that is speaking against standardized testing, I'd like to raise the idea that test anxiety can't be used as a reason to not support standardized testing, because when you are in university, students will have to take exams anyway, as they're an important part of, you know, college life and such. So, taking a standardized test and being able to perform well under pressure is a good indication of success at universities, which is what admissions officers look for. Silence. I'm blanking out. Dude, I need to, like, I need to see something that's actually, like... I'll pause it. Yeah, you can pause it. I won. No, no, no. Are you for mental health? Mental health is important. Yeah, I know. Are you on the side of mental health? Oh, my God, I could talk so much about that, but I forget. I know, I was like, there's so much stuff about our arguments that you can say, and it's like, I can't believe that you can't see it. I left holes in my argument. Yeah, but I'm not telling you. Bro, I don't know, I just, like, it's just something I can't do without, I have to read it, actually read it. Like, it's not that I can't think of anything exactly, it's just that to me, or else I start stuttering and stuff. We're already at the peak of 15 minutes. Yeah, but that's, like, we're not at 15 minutes. I could. Okay. Okay, go ahead. Okay, so you mentioned that students will have to take, in college, they would have to take exams either way. It doesn't matter if they take standardized tests or not. However, it's also important to remember that in college, there's multiple classes that, like, do not assign tests. For example, English classes tend to assign more essay questions. They tend to assign more projects, presentations, et cetera. And the same goes for a lot of other classes. And oftentimes, standardized testing happens more often than you would get a test in the classroom. I know lots of classrooms in the college setting tend to only give three to four tests a semester. So in that case, why don't you argue that doing projects such as, like, I don't know, an essay or a presentation are more effective since it displays a student's more understanding on the topic rather than simply just getting anxious about memorizing certain concepts within the subject? So are you proposing that, like, college admissions evaluate tests and essays rather than, like, an exam? Yeah. I feel like they should evaluate more of the student's knowledge rather than doing it through, like, tests because, like I stated, like, tests are meant more to, like, just show memorization, especially if it's, like, for example, a multiple choice test. You're pretty much just memorizing definitions and stuff. But then, like, the next week, you might forget it. Whereas if you write an essay, it shows that you truly understand the topic since you had to think about it more and you actually had to put more time outside of the classroom to test that knowledge. There are essay portions on standardized tests, like the CASP and the SAT and the ACT. They all have writing sections, too, that admissions auditors evaluate. I'd also like to add that, like, in high school, it's, like, really emphasized that, like, what separates you from, like, 20,000 other different people is, like, your essay because, like, at the end of the day, like, it's all just numbers in front of you or in front of them. And the essay is kind of what, like, shows your uniqueness and, like, your originality. I could argue that, saying that the same thing about categorizing students in, like, comparison to essays, you could do it with tests as well. Like, the SAT and the ACT, like, you get ringed out of, like, a bunch of people. And that's why the SAT and the ACT you could use for colleges because that just shows, like, the amount of knowledge that you know and, like, yeah. I also think that either way students are going to be anxious because you're still being compared to basically everybody else. So whether they're being evaluated by a project or an essay or a standardized exam, they're still going to be nervous. Like, they're still being held to a standard, which is what these exams are. And just hopping in here as well, with standardized tests, they're a way for colleges to filter out some of the lower testing scores. Because if it's known to be a high difficulty to get into college, they probably don't want to look through every single individual admission. But if they see, oh, this stack of applicants all did pretty well on their standardized test, they'll be more likely to look through those. So it is a way to help them make their decisions. Silence is back. That's nice. Do you have anything to say? I'll just continue. Okay. Regarding that argument about the colleges using it for their convenience, the argument makes it sound more like it's for the convenience of the university rather than, like, the convenience of the student who actually wants to attend there so they can expand their knowledge. Another issue that arises up is what if the student, for example, is into, like, arts or theater or something like that. Taking a standardized test does not really show their knowledge if they're into subjects such as the arts, as they actually have to perform whether that's, you know, in a play or if they have to do a painting or whatever. So couldn't one argue that having standardized tests for students like that is practically not beneficial since that itself is not preparing them for their education leading from college, master's programs, and even further on? As a theater major, so as a arts major, standardized tests are not the only metric that are used in terms of physical, 3D, or studio art majors. They will also submit a portfolio, and as for theater majors, they will audition. So I'm not arguing that standardized testing should be the only metric used, but it is a good ballpark in order to start looking at the field of applicants so that you can start narrowing down who you're looking into recruiting. On a different note, standardized tests also show, like, the board of school departments where their schools are at in terms of educating their students, whether they're being undereducated or whether they're exceeding in their classes and what they need to do to change their learning goals and such to better fit the nation. So, yeah. And jumping on that, standardized tests aren't only for students going into college. They're also to measure the effectiveness of schools. If we know that a school has a long history of underperforming students, then the government could know to send more teachers there to aid them or, if needed, shut the school down, which, of course, wouldn't be good. But at the end of the day, with the education budget where it is right now, if a school isn't able to necessarily get the results that are expected for the students to do well in their future and there aren't teachers that are able to step in and bring those scores up, then it might be a sign that there needs to be serious action taken, and that's something that standardized tests could do. I'd kind of like to piggyback off of that. I went to a middle school that two decades ago was very underperforming, and there was also gang violence in there. There would be drive-bys and stuff. It's pretty crazy to think about. But they actually enacted this law, or at least for this single school, that there needed to be an extra hour of education so, like, all the other schools in the district would get out an hour early instead of us, which was actually pretty crazy to think about. And that is one way that standardized tests can highlight schools that need more help in ways and lead them to do things other than necessarily completely closing the school. By seeing what schools might need a bit extra help, they can use a bunch of methods in order to help those students succeed because we want all of our youth to be given equal opportunities, and standardized tests can serve as a metric to see which schools need extra help. On that, at the moment, does anyone else have anything else they would like to say? I have one last issue to mention up. So another thing with standardized tests is that, obviously, they take a lot of time. I mean, students who are, like, even if they don't have a lot of time, Another thing with standardized tests is that, obviously, they take a lot of time. I mean, students who are, like, even able to take the time to go to, like, a learning center to prepare them for the exam, they do practice tests and, you know, whatnot. One issue with that is that some students might not be able to even afford, like, those types of preparation. And another issue is that in doing so, since it takes a lot of time, it could even, like, make them spend less time on their schoolwork, which should probably be more important since, you know, school's there to provide them an education, not just prepare them for one gigantic test and then be like, okay, well, you know, we're done here. So wouldn't any of you like to argue against the fact that, one, a lot of students cannot afford the preparation materials, and, two, that the tests themselves take away a lot of time from student studies, which seem more important because, you know, it's years of schooling compared to, you know, one exam that they take a year. I would like to say that time management really falls on the student and it reflects their academic efforts and academic potential. If a student chooses to study for their exam over their actual coursework, that is kind of on them, but if they can, like, if they manage both, which is possible to do both while in their actual class and on the exam, that is something that universities are looking for, students with academic drive and potential that can, like, balance, like, course, like, loads like that. And as for some students being able to afford, like, practice exams and stuff, there are free resources. There's libraries. I'm sure lots of schools offer counseling and tutoring on their campuses and stuff, even, like, in high schools and middle schools. So it's just a matter of the drive that the student has to be, to want to do better on those types of standardized exams. And not to mention that with a lot of types of standardized exams, you are able to find previous year's tests online. So you could, even for free, just find one of those, start practicing on it, score yourself, see how you did, and start figuring out what your weak spaces are in order to improve as a student. Are we good? All right, is everyone? Well, Esme has to say her part. Let's have Ryan wrap it up, and then come on. I'll walk in there, and I'm a spider. Yeah. Do you want to? Okay, Ryan, take that. What mic is Ryan on? Wait, is your point? Oh, play the sound again. Yeah, I'm waiting for him to get on that side. I don't think you need to play the sound. I have an ending sound. Do you? Yeah, I have an ending. Is it like a sports sound? No, it's not. I'm a professional. Well, whenever you're ready. Oh, my God, my ears. Is it going? Oh. And that's a wrap, Titans. Thanks for tuning in to our first episode of the Goldfishers. If you enjoyed today's episodes, remember to leave a comment on what your favorite goldfish flavor is. Pizza is never. All right. Who did this? Who did this? Yo. I am getting that out. No, no. Oh, my God. Yeah, who messed with my life? And that's a wrap, Titans. Thanks for tuning in to our first episode of Goldfishers. If you enjoyed today's episode, remember to leave a comment on what your favorite goldfish flavor is. You can find us on Spotify at Goldfishers. This is your host, Ryan, out. I think the first one. Yeah. Dude. No, we've got to keep working on it. The first one. You're part of it? Yeah. Okay. So, what mic is this? Dude. That's actually weird. Put that on. What do I say? Speak into the mic what you're saying. Do I have to be like, oh, like, I'm talking about, like, against. No, because we'll edit that into their argument. So, just start. Introduce yourself and say your argument. Okay. Okay, sure. Whatever. Hi, I'm Esmet, and I wanted to say standardized testing does not necessarily benefit a student's learning creativity and critical thinking. However, it does teach us the bad habits of outguessing and racing through each question. Not to mention, these standardized tests promote competition and comparisons between other students. It emphasizes the idea of memorizing and a narrow bound of learning, which in most cases is not very beneficial for the students who are completing these exams, since it can tie back to mental health complications.