Standardized Testing Here To Stay
It’s time to face the fact that everyone is different, so how can there be a test that equally measures everyone’s intelligence? Standardized test have definitely gotten a lot better over time, by they have become less culturally biased, but how equal can they ever be? Many methods have been developed to try to create more fair tests, but has it come to the point where someone has to stop and say this as good as it’s going to get? Educational Testing Service, which creates questions for the SAT, Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and other standardized tests, has a set of fairness guidelines posted on its Web site. Thomas Ewing, director of media relations for Educational Testing Service says, “Every question is reviewed by trained sensitivity reviewers to ensure that questions do not contain any materials that might contain racial, gender, geographic, or other obvious biases,” (Rammohan, 2007). Executive director of the Princeton Review Foundation, Jay Rosner, believes that the efforts of the testing service have still not eliminated the problem with cultural bias in test. He conducted an SAT bias analysis in 2003. He examined answers from 100,000 test takers along with their race, ethnicity and gender. Rosner's findings, outlined in “On White Preferences,” showed that “every single question carefully preselected to appear on the test favors whites over blacks.” Rosner said, “Whites answered 99 percent of the questions correctly at a higher rate than did blacks and Latinos.” (Rammohan, 2007). Another way to try to get rid of cultural bias in standardized test is by creating equal opportunity for all students. This includes making sure everyone gets enough time to take the test, providing tutoring for all students, and making sure they the context of the test is clear not confusing and also making sure it is equally familiar with all groups (Benson, 2003). These tips will help to make standardized test less culturally biased, but no test will ever be completely free of biases. People come from all different walks of life so therefore no standardized test will be able to accommodate such a wide range of people. |