Why Students' Perform Poorly on the Standardized and College Exams (Research Paper Sample)

Why students’ perform poorly on the standardized and college exams
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Introduction
There is substance evidence in the educational research literature that the differences on standardized and college exams of the minority and privileged students often reflect a high difference in the development of skills as well as possible differences in relation to cultural background of the examinees. This report examines the main reason for poor performance on standardized and college exams and at the same time offering practical ways through which schools may support students to overcome the stereotype threat.
The main reason for poor performance of college exams and standardized exams is the fact that standardized tests often ignore the skills and abilities for a student to function in a complex multicultural society. These may include the ability to work collectively in various social and cultural contexts, understand other people’s perspective, and adjust to change and value moral integrity and social commitments. Additionally, use of multiple choice tests often promotes cultural bias in the sense that the meaning of the standardized test question may not only be the same for various subcultures including Hispanics, African Americans, and European American. For instance, the student body in the case scenario comprises of Hispanics (40%), African American (15%) and European Americans (25%). The most effective way to minimize cultural biasness in a classroom set up is using scores to evaluate the manner in which members of the different subcultures perform over time. People who design standardized and college exams are often familiar with certain ideas, objects and cultures, and thus high probability of promoting biasness (Rizga & Hernandez, 2015). When students encounter troubles in these exams on the basis of their cultural, they become aware of the fact that the “favored culture” exists as an “impervious class” that allows them to succeed as competition is minimized. This perception may trigger students to not only refuse to take the tests but also drop out of school as evidenced in the case scenario where most male students dropped out in their senior class.
Negative stereotypes are generally taken as potential sources for prejudice, discrimination and bias in communications across different ethnic, gender, cultural and racial boundaries since people fear the possibility of their performance confirming existence of negative stereotypes concerning the social group they identify with. Prejudice in a classroom set up occurs when students are required to offer predetermined opinions as evidence in standardized test regardless of the fact that their opinion is not on the basis of actual experience and reasoning. Bias can be deemed as a type of prejudice against a particular person or group that often occurs due to the task and reward structure of a classroom. Stereotype is the assumption that a particular student has certain characteristics on the basis on unsubstantiated assumptions particularly on the basis of their race, ethnic and gender background. Discrimination on the other hand is the process through which students learn to react differently to dissimilar motivations. For instance, according to Gándara (2010), African American students perform more poorly on college exams and standardized tests compared to white Americans when their race is salient and performed equally or better when race was not emphasized. It is thus important to recognize the manner in which the educational system provides access to political, social and economic success for the privileged students and erecting the barriers to the privileged students in the minorities in such a way that resource inequality and devalued identities are perpetuated and linked
Various theorists have recommended different ways of eliminating stereotypical threats as well as the negative impacts it triggers (Boucher et al, 2012). Stereotype threat is an inter-subjective pressure caused by situational cues and individual disposition that makes the prospect of being negatively stereotyped. The fact that stereotype threat is situational determined implies that its remedies should focus on the structure of the school. Stereotype threat can be dramatically reduced in a school environment that conveys optimism for the stereotypes ability of the students to meet academic challenges as they provide the students with challenging work and not remedial work thereby persuading the student to adopt incremental theory of intelligence. For instance, Black students who receive message of high standards and optimism on their ability to meet the stipulated standards are less likely to attribute negative academic to bias than the black students who only receive a message of high standards (Appel & Kronberger, 2012). The possibility that stereotyped students experience stereotype threat should be condensed in learning-goal environments where stude...