While standardized tests aren't perfect, for many schools they seem an effective way to prove that students are benefiting from their time in the classroom. Without mandatory testing it can be difficult to determine if students are advancing as each teacher may have his own system of grading and, as a result, grades from one teacher to the next may not be as comparable as schools would like. With a standardized test, schools can more effectively determine how all students are doing based on a standardized measure.
Some worry that testing students leads schools to view students more as numbers and less as unique learners. Schools often use the results of regular testing to track students, putting them into groups based upon their performance. When students fall victim to tracking they may find themselves stuck in educational slots from which they can't escape. This may mean that students will be unable to advance beyond their current positions, even if their skills improve, making it seem useless to aim for improvement.
Mandatory testing allows national governing bodies to better compare students from one area of the country to students in another. Student understanding is quantified with mandatory testing, allowing for easier comparison. By comparing effectively, those seeking to improve education processes can see where education is working as well as where the systems are struggling, allowing them to better seek out effective practices. This advantage will be even more major as many states across the country transition to the common core standards, a unified set of standards, in the years to come.
While some contend that schools can learn all they need to about students by testing them, others argue that tests are not always an effective way to assess knowledge. Some students struggle with tests, making it hard to see how much they know based on these measures. Others argue that the tests themselves are unreliable, pointing to studies that show that students in minority cultures may be disadvantaged by cultural bias and topics on these tests.