Standardized Testing And Its Impact On The Classroom

Microaggressions can be any commonplace comments that are intended or not, to offend another person. However, one might think individuals would be aware if they inherently said something offensive. Microaggressions are even apparent in standardized testing and academia as test writers and teachers can unintentionally degrade students with a seemingly innocent statement. Standardized tests are allegedly supposed to test student’s knowledge of what they have learned or previously known. The tests also reflect the academic progress of the school to determine the quality of education that the school provides. Standardized tests seem to be an unbiased way of determining skill, but the tests do not take into account student’s home lives, as well†¦show more content†¦Instead of a student being scored on what they have written they are compared to two other essays to determine whether they fall closer to a high scoring essay or a low scoring essay. Anchor papers are a requirement since essays cannot be graded with an answer key, but are subjective to each individual grader. Anchor papers represent a well-written response to the essay question posed. However, educators have commented that it is difficult to compare these supposedly perfect papers to a variety of student’s diverse responses. The pressure, of comparing sample essays to individual responses often ends with inconsistently graded essays. In â€Å"Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Standardized Testing (HBO)† John Oliver makes light of the flaws in Pearson’s testing corporation. Oliver uses clips to convey these deficiencies. For example, Oliver shows a clip of test graders describing what it is like to grade standardized essays. Graders describe if their supervisors see them awarding too much of a particular score they are asked to see certain scores as higher or lower than they deserve. According to David Puthoff, a grader with Questar, when he was confronted with an essay about the good qualities of a leader in Louisiana one student’s response was Martin Luther King Jr. This response was deemed to be incorrect. The essay employed correct use of AAE and demonstrated accurate rules for this dialect. However, the student did not directly answer the