Goodbye Testing

All schools have been relying on standardize testing such as MCAS, PARC, and SATS. These testing’s rate students on the material they have learned to see where students stand on a chart. The testing shows that students are and not developing in the subjects taken.

There are so many issue with testing in general because of how students learn and understand certain questions. The positive things about the testing is that it does show a lot of improvement on student achievement. And with the test, the teachers can teach along the testing questions. But at the same time the teachers are against the standardize testing.

Standardize testing is not fun nor fair to the students. The test goes on for one full day of school because more than a day spent on this test is wasting learning time for students. The teachers on the other hand are basically preparing students to take a test. And because of this, teachers are not having as much fun teaching to students than they should.

I firmly do not believe that testing should be what causes a student to not go into the next level class or go up to the next grade level. Most students cannot test because they might have disabilities. I personally do not like testing because I am a student who knows the material but cannot apply it to a test. During the test I get really bad anxiety and I tend to blank out even though I studied hours for the test.

The other problem students can have with testing is not understanding the question that a test could be asking. Yes, tests are supposed to challenge students but at the same time it is not fair to the students who cannot comprehend the material being questioned or to the students who misinterpret the content.

Along with students not being able to comprehend it could be caused by the distraction of others taking the test. Watching other students taking a test and seeing how far they have gotten and compared to where they stand, makes students feel the need to rush through to play catch up with everyone else. This means that they are not taking their time to read and try to understand the question.          

Overall, a standardized test does not accurately represent a student’s true capabilities since the test is structured to one standard style of learning. For students who learn differently and comprehend information differently these standardize tests limit the students of their true skills by not allowing them to demonstrate their thought processes. This in turn discourages students during these tests and negatively impacts their potential future due to poor scores.