Standardized testing has transformed education in the U.S. from valuing learning to solely preparing students to take tests. What began as a way to assess poorly performing schools has led to schools focusing only on test material at the expense of a well-rounded liberal arts education. The overuse of standardized tests has created a culture of fear in schools and caused non-tested subjects like art, music and history to be cut. Additionally, the multi-billion dollar standardized testing industry has a strong influence in continuing testing practices despite growing opposition from students, parents and educators. The essay argues that to preserve liberal arts education, standardized testing should be ended and schools should have autonomy to implement their own curricula tailored to student needs.

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Lucas Somma
English 101
Professor Pelletier
17 December 2015
Standardized Testing and the End of Liberal Arts
One week a year, Connecticut students in grades three through eight will enter their
classrooms to see educational posters covered, three pencils and a makeshift nameplate on each
desk, a box labeled “CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL”, and a John Grisham novel on the
proctor’s desks. One week a year, teachers lay aside the heavy burden of drafting 6 hour long
lesson plans, Vice-Principals morph from disciplinarians to testing task managers, cafeteria staff
prep for the extra snack waves in between breakfast and lunch, substitutes and professional staff
become guard-like assistant proctors all across the building, and students are primed to produce
high scores on their tests.
One week a year doesn’t sound like a tremendous deal in the 180 day school cycle, but
every ounce of lesson material is geared towards making students ideal test takers. Subsequently,
one week a year turns into a 180 day cycle of imparting knowledge useful only on the CMTs,
CAPTs, SmarterBalance Tests, PSATs, SATs, and ACTs. We’re casting aside intelligence,
intellectualism, and higher processing skills and instead, preparing for the tests. The education
system in America is robbing youth of an education that values learning and favors information.
The inception of standardized testing didn’t initially cause a catastrophic downfall of
liberal arts education. Like most atrocities, standardized testing became progressively more evil
after a generally pure creation.

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Standardized testing has roots in the pre-WWI military, but is typically seen as a legacy
of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty. In the 1960’s, Johnson and other Democrats
championed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which required that all urban public
school students are tested for data purposes. At first, tremendous amounts of money were being
poured into urban schools with high concentrations of minorities. The 1960’s Democrats wanted
to ensure that there was fruit from their labor, and the only logical way to test this was with a
standardized test solely for predictably poorly performing schools.
Originally, the problem solving mechanisms proposed by Johnson’s bill were eventually
classified as profoundly incompetent. Instead of channeling energy to students’ individual needs,
money was violently propelled into low performing states, school districts, and schools; at the
end of the day, excellent schools were ignored and every solution began with a dollar sign and
ended with a wealthy administrator.
Eventually, congress grew worrisome of focusing exclusively on poverty-stricken.
Propositions were later passed to test every student. Although states reserved the right to
administer tests however they chose, data was required for mathematics and literacy. At this
point in time, schools were still largely unaccountable for negative test scores, thanks to unions
and a spending-oriented mindset.
Johnson’s implementation of standardized testing was to wage war on poverty. Every
Democrat, Republican, and Independent seemed to agree that the best strategy for combating low
test scores was to assist poorly performing schools. It was George W. Bush’s, No Child Left
Behind initiative that poorly performing schools were besieged and actively combatted.
George W. Bush, like most presidents, desired accountability from schools. Yet, his
strategy for fighting al Queda seemed to cross over into his policymaking with regards to

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education reform. Poorly performing schools became targets and teachers with poorly
performing students were seen as terrorists.
No Child Left Behind required that all public school students were tested at least once,
annually. Schools with low scores were subject to severe punishment. Nefarious practices such
as defunding or closing schools, firing non-tenured teachers, and shuffling tenured teachers to
other schools, began.. As one reporter found, “schools that don't meet requirements for two years
or longer face increasingly tough consequences, including busing children to higher-performing
schools, offering tutoring and replacing staff” (Hefling).
This created a culture of fear and intense overreaction in the education community.
Expulsion of unsatisfactory students, endless professional development training for staff,
lengthened school hours, gutting of non-academic programs, and drastically decreased funding
for subjects outside of testing parameters (i.e. art, music, and even history), became the norm.
Yet, loss of teaching staff, art programs, and lacrosse teams alike are not the greatest
casualty of Bush’s war on education. The No Child Left Behind punishments are explicitly cruel
and have disrupted the education system. However, I’m reiterating the idea that the greatest loss
to American students is an actual education. Because of the panicked state that our schools exist
in, the education community has collectively overreacted. Students are taught curriculum that is
engineered specifically for tests. As a Time magazine reporter noted, students aren’t just taking
standardized tests once per year:
But states and districts, panicked that their students would not perform well on
all-important end-of-year exams, naturally responded by ordering up all kinds of
new tests to track student progress. In many districts, that meant students were
suddenly taking government-mandated exams every week or two, in addition to

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their classes' regular tests and quizzes. In Gadsden County, Florida, for example,
students were required to take a total of 242 standardized exams between
kindergarten and their high school graduation day, according to a recent study by
the conservative Foundation for Excellence in Education. (Edwards).
Moreover, what is increasingly more disturbing is that keeping standardized testing in
schools is highly profitable to a newly conceived testing industry. In less than two decades, “the
testing industry, controlled by a handful of companies such as CBT/McGraw-Hill, Harcourt, and
Pearson, has grown from $263 million worth of sales in 1997 to $2 billion” (Rizga). In other
words, not only does a well-meaninged George W. Bush have his hands on standardized testing,
so do for-profit entities.
With all the opposition regarding standardized testing, the question becomes, what can
we do to fix it? In practical application, students all across the nation are simply opting out.
According to Krishna Rizga’s studies, school districts in New York (where standardized tests are
required to be administered to at least 95% of the public school population), are averaging at
91% participation rates (Rizga). Clearly, students are just as fed up as parents.
But, what if you’re not a student? What if you’re a college student who freshly graduated
high school? Said person has no voice in the political arena, no kids to snatch away from “the
system”, and likely no interest in ending the game. So far, I’ve found that the only thing I can do
is encourage advocacy on a personal level. Simply supporting frazzled students, like my brother,
and reminding them that a grade does not define a person, is all we can do. Sharing the injustices
of a cruel system and stirring education advancement in more prominent leaders is what’s left for
us to do.

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In America, we have an ongoing reputation for compromise. We compromise the safety
of citizens thanks to the “right to bear arms”; e compromise the health care needs of the
impoverished thanks to the fundamental right to greed; we compromise the right to life thanks to
protecting women's’ reproductive rights; we compromised the welfare of the planet that sustains
our humanity thanks to a thirst for nonrenewable energy sources. Our history as a people is
riddled with failure, unfortunately.
Perhaps this sounds like an entry in a communist manifesto, but I hope that these words
ring deeper than a political point. In fact, time has shown us again and again that the more
government is involved with the standardized testing process, the more it has utterly failed to
rescue the education of youths.
The concept of learning should never have been defined by a multiple choice bubble.
Rather, students must be actively engaged with the curriculum. The only thing that testing has
proven is that students are highly knowledgeable and adept to learn… we’ve just been focusing
too narrowly on what they should be learning.
In order to preserve the liberal arts education, which is the key to making well-rounded
and intellectual youth, is to rid education of a system that prepares students for tests and not for
life. Overall, the only solution to standardized testing is to end it.
In it’s place, teachers should be taught how to cater to learning styles and abilities while
using a curriculum that is broadly defined at the state level, narrowed down in the schools, and
implemented by the teachers. This will allow tech schools, magnet schools, and special interest
institutions to have tremendous liberty helping students succeed. Furthermore, grades should
indicate where funding needs to be directed.

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The argument that standardized testing is inherently evil is largely misconstructed. The opening
argument against standardized testing should always be that children are being drilled for a test
and are subsequently deprived of a wholesome, valuable liberal arts education.
The issue with standardized testing isn’t that children shouldn’t be tested, but rather that
youth are taught almost exclusively how to take these tests. The streamline from poverty-stricken
school to prison has only grown larger since No Child Left Behind. Essentially, we are treating
urban youth as lab rats. We’re forcing STEM and literacy oriented test-taking skills into 180
days and thereby robbing them of a liberal arts education in the earliest stages of development.
It’s no wonder at all that urban youth will never see the inside of a liberal arts college (which is
an intended landing pad for high school graduates). In essence, as Sanford Ungar notes, this is a
form of discrimination:
It is condescending to imply that those who have less cannot understand and
appreciate the finer elements of knowledge—another way of saying, really, that
the rich folks will do the important thinking and the lower classes will simply
carry out their ideas. That is just a form of prejudice and cannot be supported
intellectually. (Ungar).
Lucas Somma
English 101
Professor Pelletier
17 December 2015
Works Cited
Edwards, Haley Sweetland. "Leaving Tests Behind." Time 185.5 (2015): 28-31. Academic
Search Premier. Web. 6 Dec. 2015.

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HEFLING, KIMBERLY. AP Education, Writer. "A Guide To No Child Left Behind." AP
Regional State Report - Florida (2012):Newspaper Source Plus. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.
RIZGA, KRISHNA, and Kiana Hernandez. "Sorry, I'm Not Taking This Test." Mother Jones
40.5 (2015): 38-62. Academic Search Premier. Web. 6 Dec. 2015.
Ungar, Sanford J. The New Liberal Arts. They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic
Writing. By Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. 3rd ed. New York: W.W.
Norton, 2015. 226-33. Print.