"The increase of standardized testing arose out No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the 2009 Race to the Top Initiative" (Morgan, 2016). The reasoning behind this increase in testing was to heighten test scores as we continuously fall behind our foreign counterparts like Finland, Japan, and Singapore. Policy-makers argued that increased standardized testing and using those standardized test scores to evaluate educators would create accountability to fix declining test scores (Morgan, 2016). That, however, has not been the case. Instead of fixing our standardized testing scores, these policies (specifically those that use standardized testing to evaluate teaching quality) have caused unexpected consequences. These include but are not limited to:

1. Declining Higher Order Thinking - Low test scores can lead to many ramifications for teachers, schools, and districts including closing schools and less funding. Additionally, teachers will sometimes move to less effective teaching methods like rote memorization and drill that improve scores but fail to develop higher-order thinking skills (Morgan, 2016).

2. Corruption and Cheating - These aforementioned ramifications can also cause blatant cheating in districts. Rose states "to avoid these ramifications, some school district manipulates the results... leading to skewed information about the skill level of their students" (Rose, 2015). In many districts and schools across the nation, teachers have been a part of cheating scandals where they have artificially raised test scores.

3. Less Collaboration - Additionally, because Race to the top rewards teachers through merit pay based on test scores "this approach creates tension between teachers and encourages less collaboration" (Morgan, 2016). When teachers work together and collaborate, students benefit from the wisdom of all teachers instead of just the one in their classroom. Instead of helping teachers help each other to help students this causes "closed-door" schools where students's benefits are reduced.

For these reasons, standardized testing seem to be causing more harm than good. Additionally, the reasoning that has been given for why standardized testing would benefit students isn't supported by the results we are seeing.