Victoria Rodriguez and Ramandeep Kaur

Houston Academy for International Studies

Topic: On Balance, is standardized testing beneficial to K-12 education
State: Mississippi
Position Paper Standardized Testing
Standardized testing as we defined it is a test(as of intelligence, achievement, or

personality) whose reliability has been established by obtaining an average score of a

significantly large number of individuals for use as a standard of comparison.
Standardized testing were first used in immigration when people first came over to test
social roles and find social power and status. Then came the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act of 1965 which required standardized testing in public schools.
This lead to No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, further tying public school funding to
standardized testing. Finally there is a new act called Every Student Succeeds.
Mississippi has a lot of its own amount of testing in place. For example everyone in grades 3
to 8th grade have to take the MCT which is the Mississippi Curriculum Test. Also students in
grades 4th and 7th as well as those in English 2 (10th) grade have to take a writing test known
as the Mississippi Writing Assessment Program (MWAP) .In high school, students enrolled
in Algebra I, English II, Biology and U.S. History take end-of-course exams collectively known as
the Subject Area Testing Program (SATP). The writing component of the English II exam is the
MWAP.For the MCT and SATP, students will receive one of four scores for each subject area
tested:
Advanced
Proficient
Basic
Minimal
To graduate from high school, students must receive passing scores on all SATP tests taken, as
well as the English II MWAP. Students who do not pass the first time can retake the tests on
multiple occasions as necessary.
Obviously as you can see that Mississippi is for standardized testing since it has implemented
a lot of its test also mainly after the NCLB act. Mississippi believes that the system that is in
place should stay in place, because it has shown many benefits such as showing student
performance which has benefiting the state. Also leading to more accountability, so student
know they have to get their work done. Accountability at the school level will encourage positive
changes such as the revision of district curriculum and testing programs so that they become
consistent with state curricula. Which will also mean this will motivate students to do their best.
All in all with testing in place this will provide us with better education system leading to better
literacy rate in the state. Lastly, Results from standardized tests can help reallocate funds to
schools who performed well and deserve a reward, and to those schools most in need.
Standardized testing is an effective approach that will ultimately lead to the improvement of
school districts, teachers, and student learning.

Works Cited
http://standardizedtests.procon.org/
http://astro.temple.edu/~mhicks/standardizedtestingpro.html
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yfT0i_vgCiScszu8XifQOhjxu96RjhTDb30ThhMs8T
E/edit
http://edglossary.org/standardized-test/
http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/OSA
https://www.time4learning.com/testprep/index.php/mississippi-mct-satp-test-prep/