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Testing has become a way of life that starts shortly after the cradle and may end just this side of the grave. (Black,1963)
In January of 2002, President George W. Bush with his No Child Left Behind Act changed testing forever. Tests aren't just tests anymore. In some states they are used to determine which students stay back a grade, which high school students get their diploma, and which teachers get bonuses (DiMarco, 2000). Testing can have a damaging effect on all parties involved. Test scores are being used as the only measure of a student's knowledge and skills. Tests are important, but should only be a portion of a student's evaluation. With these high stakes tests having so much weight on the future of the child, teacher, and school, you would hope that they would provide an accurate measure of a child's knowledge. They don't!
High stakes tests may give us a slight measure of a child's intellect, but they also measure the child's culture and language. Standardized test are biased. Bias takes place when the test scores are infl uenced by irrelevant characteristics of the testtaker, such as race, sex, family, wealth, religion, and so forth (Strenio ,1981). For the most part, standardized multiple choice tests are culturally biased in favor of the culture toward which the test is directed-the mainstream White culture (Elford, 2002). Current methods of making standardized tests must be abandoned (Bormuth, 1970).
This article seeks to provide you with a lens through which to view standardized testing and to show you the negative effects that testing may have. It will also give you a picture of how tests are biased and how student scores have very little to do with intellect and more to do with language, culture, and environment.
Language proficiency plays a large part in student performance on standardized test. In spite of differences in content, it may be that for certain test-takers language proficiency is the most important contributor to performance. The most obvious problem presented to non-native English speakers or to those who speak a nonstandard variety of English is whether they have familiarity with or knowledge of the words and linguistic structure of standard English (Gifford, 1989).
As it stands now, many non-English speakers...