Stadardized Testing

Pros
Standardized testing has some good aspects as well as some negative aspects. The positive views of this form of testing are the following: practicality, standardization, identification of problems, and accountability of teachers and students.
Standardized tests are, for the most part, easy to administer and easy to grade. They can be given to most of the class at once and do not require personal time and assistance with each individual student. This aspect of the test provides a good and quick way to measure our students' learning.
All students are held accountable for the knowledge of the same material. Students cannot be left behind based on any "disadvantages". Race, disabilities, language barriers, and economic status cannot be blamed for failure of these tests. Each student is held to the same standard.
This form of testing also provides a powerful way to let administration know if there is a problem in student learning or classroom teaching. Change can then be implemented after a problem is diagnosed.
When each student across a district passes the same parts of a standardized test, teachers are shown what needs to be emphasized across the different classrooms. Students take learning and testing more seriously for themselves. Individual teachers can also see what content areas they need to work on.
Some of these pros can also be viewed as cons.
Cons
The following are cons: each student is held to the same standard regardless of disability, standardized tests can be biased against some students, there are huge negative impacts to teachers and students, and meaningful learning is often affected.
While students who have disabilities or language barriers can have an alternative assessment given, the test frequently does not measure these students' knowledge. It is not appropriate to have each student measured on the same scale when they are not on the same scale in the first place. I worked in a special education classroom and assisted during end-of-year testing. This time of the year was the most stressful for my cooperating teacher. We had to know what accomodations could be used with each student and administer the tests one-on-one. Although we tried our best to prepare our students throughout the year for this test, we knew there was no fighting chance some of them would pass. My teacher had even only taught to the test. She only cared about getting our students to pass. Even though we only worked with special needs students, it was apparent the tests were biased towards "normal" education students. Those tests can often be biased towards the main population, and are therefore unfit for distribution to each individual student.
If a school does not reach its AYP according to the passing percentage of the tests, there can be very negative impacts and changes for that school. Many of the staff can lose their jobs and students are given the opportunity choose a different school. 95% of the school is required to take the test. There is a very good chance that, by holding each student to the same standard, some schools will not pass.
In my own experience, I have seen that certain content areas are left out because they are not covered on the end-of-year test. Teachers have begun to teach to the test, not the students. Real life skills are not convered in those tests and are consequently left untaught.