I was 11-years-old when I truly realized how important standardized tests are in determining my future. I had just been told my results for a sixth grade social studies assessment by my very ecstatic teacher. “It looks like your future is going to be nothing but bright!” she exclaimed. From this moment on, top test scores became equated with success for me. A little number on the College Board website was more crucial than a year’s worth of learning. My education no longer centered around curiosity and knowledge but rather the need to achieve.

Standardized testing creates this toxic environment. Many of my friends in high school took advanced classes purely to improve their class ranking and transcripts rather than for an interest in the subject, for it has long been believed that high-ranking AP, SAT, and ACT scores get students into the right college, the right job, and, consequently, the right future. At least, that is the model the American education system has been preaching in recent memory.

For the past decade, results released by the PISA, an international education survey, have displayed horrific results for the United States. Our nation, while consistently dominating on the world stage in areas such as economics and politics, has fallen severely behind in education. According to Bill Chappell of NPR, in the 2012 results, America even failed “... to crack the global top 20” in either math or reading. To combat this growing problem, our government passed programs such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to champion the employment of standardized testing. As a result, the number of general assessments given to American students in the past decade has exploded. According to a study by the Council of the Great City Schools, a typical student takes 112 mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarden classes and 12th grade. Nevertheless, many of the countries that score higher than the United States on the PISA results evaluate their students a mere three times during that same period, starkly contrasting the American model of education.

While excessive standardized testing has proven ineffective, perhaps the greatest cost of programs such as NCLB is their unfair treatment of teachers and school districts, as a whole. As stated by Dan Levin, if schools did not meet the scholastic levels set by their states in 2002 by 2014 “...state education agencies would label [them] as failures and force [the schools] to replace teachers or even close.” As a result, the phrase “teaching to test” has been frequently cited in many school districts. My mother has been a seventh and eighth grade English teacher for almost 30 years, now, but she is seriously considering giving up her career to avoid the insurmountable stress of helping her students achieve acceptable test scores. Under new Common Core restraints, she cannot teach the novels she has worked with for decades and instead must focus on preparing her pupils for the rigorous state English test.

One of the greatest problems with standardized testing is its purpose -- it is a method for comparing students through these rigorous exams. Yet, it cannot account for the socioeconomic factors outside the classroom that also contribute to scores. A student than can afford private tutoring is always going to perform more strongly than a student that is more concerned about where their next meal is coming from than homework. Thus, whether it is intentional or not, standardized testing is often bias toward lower income students. In addition, in certain subjects, humans simply cannot be compared. Should a student that studies only one piano concerto in a year earn a lower grade than a more musically inclined pupil that masters four pieces? In the case of the arts, it is far better that such comparisons not be made.

Nevertheless, getting rid of standardized testing completely is not the answer. In order to promote a unified education across the country, sometimes comparisons must be made. However, it is when society gets caught up condensed numbers rather than the curiosity and creativity of its children that a nation falters. We must learn to find a better balance between utilizing common standards and sanctioning them to become the dominant statistic in our educations.