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Raising Academic Standards or Stepping Backwards High stakes testing is a step backwards for education. Tests that determine grade advancement, teacher pay, school funding and accreditation are becoming increasingly popular. Politicians and corporate leaders support these tests in an effort to "reform" public schools. Instead of reform, high stakes tests force schools and teachers to narrow curriculum to "teach to the test" rather than increasing real knowledge. The emphasis on test-oriented education is on memorization …

…negative effects on learning. Because the consequence of the testing is detrimentally high, schools have narrowed their curriculum, and teachers have sacrificed real instruction in favor of test preparation. This leaves much of public education with rote memorization, an old outdated, ineffective form of learning, or rather non-learning. Instead of raising academic standards, the push for high stakes testing will set education progress back as well as lead to more drop outs and minority disparity.