I can remember sitting in my SAT prep in high school unwillingly listening to the blabber of the man on the TV tell me how to find the circumference of a circle thinking “Oh, wow I know how to do this, I’m going to ace the SATs”. Well, that confidence was quickly taken away from me when I was sitting in front of the blue SAT pamphlet, trying to catch my breath because I didn’t know what the word consequently meant or what I just read 5 minutes ago. Test anxiety, what my brother, a freshman algebra teacher, told me kills most students and fails to make them test as good as they could explain what they learned Friday in literature class. Every student has it, and if you don’t you’re lying. Although I obviously passed the SATs, considering I’m in a college class, I can’t help but think about the hundreds of small minds that I will one day teach that will be going to bed thinking that their top college like, Princeton, LaSalle or even Rowan University will deny them because of a SAT, ACT or a placement test.

What exactly are High Stakes testing? Wayne Au, a professor of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell, tells us that “a test is high stakes when its results are used to make important decisions that affect students, teachers, administrations, communities, schools and districts” (Au 258). That sounds as brutal as it can get, at least to me. Students await their test scores and (whether they are high or low) are immediately affected.

Let’s take a closer look at the impact of high stakes tests on students alone. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing explains in their article that high stakes testing leads to “increased grade retention and dropping out” (FairTest.org n.p). I can tell you first hand that it literally drains you, physically and emotionally. For four years of your life you are taught that this test is literally the only thing that will make you successful. In addition to keeping students unstable, the tests are completely unfair. To put in in similar terms, some students just really don’t test well. As I stated before, test anxiety affects many students across the United States. Joseph Spector, from lohud, The Journal News, says that about seven-hundred school districts stated that “state tests are causing greater anxiety than local assessments” (Spector n.p).

Students aren’t the only ones who get the lowdown when it comes to high stakes testing. Teachers are literally pushed out of school districts, and most of them are “disgusted” at the emphasis on high states testing. My brother, a teacher in the Camden Charter School District, (probably one of the bests) says that he was evaluated on his lessons after the students were given tests. In similar terms, he was literally tested on how well of a teacher he was due to how well the students did. From the mouth of my brother, “complete bullshit”.

High stakes testing forces teachers (of tested subjects) to teach to the test. They virtually kill all creative juices a teacher has to create a lesson. The testing makes the teacher fixate on the model problem corporations, like Pearson, which is deemed suitable to “demonstrate comprehension” of topics in curriculum. This is an overbearing amount of content that the teachers are forced to cover before the test (which is completely unrealistic)- and they must for the well-being of their students. Keep in mind, teaching isn’t only about getting the material out there it’s about making sure the students comprehend all of that information being given. And some say teaching is easy..

High Stakes testing is an understandable way to try to group the U.S student population into the knows and know not’s. As a future teacher I understand that high stakes testing is a way to police teachers to keep their students in check (I mean it kept me in check). It makes sense from a political point of view but when teachers are being bread to differentiate instruction and to use alternate forms of assessment, it is completely contradictory. As much as I can spout out all of the negatives of high stakes testing, I nor has anyone else, found an alternative method of measuring student comprehension, demonstration, or proficiently low in cost, or uniform.