Standardized testing has been a way for school systems to try and treat all students equally, but what they didn’t know was that by attempting to make all students equal they’re ignoring the fact that students don’t all learn the same way. Maybe handing out #2 pencils and giving the same test to every student across the country is the most efficient option, but it isn’t effective. These tests are not a good judge of a student’s potential especially when all of the students taking the exam don’t have access to the same exact education. As Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Standardized testing is a plague in the public school system, affecting not only its students but its teachers and schools. These tests have the power to determine how well students are being taught by their teachers, meaning the students could have straight A’s but if they don’t perform well on their standardized test it could negatively affect a school’s overall reputation. This causes schools to focus more heavily on providing “test-prep” courses, and this takes away from a student's ability to take courses that they enjoy and will help expand their creativity. The majority of the school year should be dedicated to helping students learn things that will make them successful later in life, and how to apply these things to real world situations. Instead, they are being taught to pass tests, and less than half of students are successful at doing so. The amount of time students spend on “test prep” courses would be more beneficial if it was spent learning a range of things that would better prepare them for the world after high school, for example, finance or home economics courses. These are the things that will help create more well-rounded students and these will be the students that succeed whether they choose to go to college or right into the workforce after they graduate. For the students that plan to go to college right after graduating high school, these are the test scores that most colleges look at before deciding whether or not a student is a good match for their school. The worst part is that after spending their whole lives in school, colleges will determine how smart the student is by looking at how many multiple choice questions they can get right In a very short amount of time.
Test scores should in no way be an indicator, not of the schools performance, not of the teacher’s performance, and not of the student’s performance either. Hopefully, in the near future, there will be a new and more effective way to gauge the abilities of each individual student. We are in need of something that allows students to expand their knowledge and creativity beyond practice tests and scantron sheets.
