Editing Standardized test (section)

=== Disagreement with educational standards ===
A [[criterion-referenced test]] is more common and more practical when the goal is to know whether the test takers have learned the required material.<ref name="Allen" />

However, some critics object to "standardized tests" not because they object to giving students the same test under the reasonably similar conditions and grading the responses the same way, because they object to the type of material that is typically tested by schools. Although standardized tests for non-academic attributes such as the [[Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking]] exist, schools rarely give standardized tests to measure "initiative, creativity, imagination...curiosity...good will, ethical reflection, or a host of other valuable dispositions and attributes".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kohn |first=Alfie |title=The Case Against Standardized Testing: Rising the Scores, Ruining the Schools |publisher=Heinemann |year=2000 |isbn=978-0325003252 |location=Portsmouth, NH}}</ref><ref>To teach: the journey of a teacher, by William Ayers, Teachers College Press, 1993, {{ISBN|0-8077-3985-5}}, {{ISBN|978-0-8077-3985-3}}, pg. 116</ref>  Instead, the tests given by schools tend to focus less on moral or character development, and more on individual identifiable academic skills, such as [[reading comprehension]] and [[arithmetic]]. 

In his book, ''[[The Shame of the Nation]],'' [[Jonathan Kozol]] argues that students submitted to standardized testing are victims of "cognitive decapitation". Kozol comes to this realization after speaking to many children in inner city schools who have no spatial recollection of time, time periods, and historical events. This is especially the case in schools where due to shortages in funding and strict accountability policies, schools have done away with subjects like the arts, history and geography; in order to focus on the content of the mandated tests.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kozol |first=Jonathan |title=The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America |publisher=Random House |year=2005 |isbn=9781415924167 |location=Print |pages=118–119}}</ref>