However, who should we hold accountable for the poor test scores of children in America? Is it the teachers? The schools? The parents? The test? Standardized tests have been used by the government to determine the success and failure of school districts throughout the country in an effort to decide how to appropriately allocate federal funds for education
However, because the government places such emphasis on the results of these tests, and because so much money hangs in the balance for successful school districts, many teachers across the country "teach to the test," meaning that they merely prepare students for what they will need to know to score well. This type of education does not encourage life learning; the ability to not only comprehend, but also analyze and interpret learned information. Instead, it is merely a regurgitation of knowledge that children learn for the sole purpose of answering questions on a standardized test correctly. Standardized tests, particularly the SAT, have no value for measuring the learning potential of a student; just what they know at the time the test is administered. Also, standardized tests compare all students to one another, rather than evaluating the progress or intelligence of individual students, taking no limitations (mental, social, racial or otherwise) into consideration. .
Standardized Minds discusses some biases of standardized tests like the SAT. Perhaps the most talked about is the bias of the SAT against low-income and/or minority students. I felt this claim was instantly affirmed by Richard Khalenberg's writings in All Together Now. Because there is a very real, very immediate problem regarding the mixture of social classes in public schools, many students do not have the same educational or life experiences. Khalenberg found that low-income students in middle-class schools performed better than low-income students in lower-class schools.