A. Take a moment to think about a test you have to take, or one that you have had in the past. The pressure and emphasis placed on its significance can almost be overwhelming.
B. Good afternoon, Dr. Jones and fellow classmates. I am Cassie Concepcion
C. I’m here today to persuade you to challenge the purpose of National and State standardized testing.
II. Body
A. Issue
1. Standardized testing has the ability to distort students. There is an overemphasis on the importance of scores instead of learning goals. Scott G. Paris author of Why Learner-Centered Assessment is Better Than High Stakes Testing published by Lambert, Nadere, McCombs, and Barbara L. in 1998 explains that “When high test scores become the goal rather than self-regulated learning, students invest disproportionate value and effort in high-stakes test.” The problem behind this is students that don’t achieve good grades regularly are told that they don’t measure up.
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Many students understand the content; in fact they are very smart. The issue is that they simply do not perform well on tests. As D.J. Stipek stated in Motivation to Learn: From theory to Practice published in 1993 by Allyn and Bacon “Because standardized tests are not based on specific general knowledge; they are based on specific knowledge contained in specific sets of books, and the text books are created by the test makers.”
3. Everyone has been a student at some point, if not currently still a student. As a student you are taught to ask questions, use materials and resources in a classroom. However, all of these are unavailable during testing. Valerie Strauss writer of The Myths of Standardized Testing published by the Washington Post in 2011 states that “Standardized tests measure only a small portion of what makes education