Throughout America, students are sharpening their No. 2 pencils, getting ready to suffer through a stress-packed four hours of filling in answers. About one and a half million students are expected to take Standardized tests this school year. Standardized tests have been a scourge of student life in the U.S. for more than fifty years, but it’s fair to say they’re more pressure-packed than ever before. The earliest record of standardized testing comes from China, where candidates for government jobs must fill out examinations, testing their knowledge of Confucian philosophy and poetry. Every student in the country takes these tests, and the tests are all given and graded in the same manner. Schools should not have students take standardized tests because they take too much time, they are very stressful, and they don’t measure a child’s level of skill in a valid way.
First of all, Standardized tests take a lot of time. According to the Council of the Great City Schools, From elementary to high school, students take roughly one hundred and twelve standardized tests, which is about two point three percent of class time. Barack Obama, has motivated states to only use two percent of class time for standardized tests. The council also says, if someone were to add up all the time students take on these tests, it would be around twenty to twenty five hours each school year. That is a lot of time for students to be taking tests, considering they have roughly seven hours of school each day. Altogether, students have about a week straight of testing! Another example is, After New York City’s perusing and math scores dove in 2010, numerous schools forced additional measures to abstain from being closed down, including day by day more than over two-hour sessions to prepare for tests on time off.
A few schools distribute in excess of a fourth of the year’s guidance to test prep. On Sep. 11, 2002, understudies at Monterey High School in Lubbock, TX, were kept from talking about the main commemoration of the 2001 terrorist attacks since they were excessively occupied with standardized test arrangements. Standardized testing takes up so much time that students have to prepare for the chaos on time out of school. It even deprives them from learning experiences like talking about what is happening in the real world. The last example is, Understudies in third grade to the end of middle school must take ten tests throughout the school year, when compared with around six tests for other students in Elementary and High school, as stated In a report from the Center for American Progress, by Melissa Lazarín (2014). Students take many standardized tests throughout the school year, having the average amount taken being and ten the minimal amount taken being around six, which is not that big of a difference. All in all, School is where children learn and develop life skills, but some of that learning time is being taken away every year just so they can bubble in test questions for multiple hours.
Secondly, they cause students to experience a high level of stress. For instance, ‘…Outlining how testing produces grasping anxiety in even the most splendid understudies, and makes youthful children throw up or cry, or both.’ On Mar. 14, 2002, the Sacramento Bee, a daily newspaper, stated that ‘test-related nerves, particularly among youthful understudies, are common to the point that the Stanford-9 test accompanies guidelines on how to manage a test booklet in the event that a student retches on it, as indicated by instruction scientist Gregory J. Cizek. Students are so stressed that some even throw up and start to cry, and the staff think that it’s just normal because they are testing, but testing should not be a thing that causes students to have mental breakdowns and dread going to school.
The American Psychological Association (APA) overviewed adolescents, ages thirteen to seventeen, living in the United States to see how teenagers encounter pressure and the effect it is having on their lives. Respondents detailed feelings of anxiety far above what they see as healthy, and all things considered, adolescents’ accounted for feelings of anxiety were higher than grown-ups’ accounted for feelings of anxiety. Standardized tests are causing students to feel anxiety and worry that is not healthy for anyone. According to John King Jr., Acting Education Secretary, Standardized exams give teachers, caregivers and students helpful information regarding whether or not students are expanding their knowledge on the critical thinking and problem-solving needed. Though it shows how students are expanding their knowledge, it is not necessarily showing how intelligent students are because of the circumstances they may go through in and out of school.
Additionally, Numerous teenagers reviewed they thought that pressure has no or just a slight effect on their well-being, adolescents report encountering an assortment of manifestations of stress, both physical and mental (Effects of Standardized Testing on Students’ Well-Being, 2014). Thirty-six percent of teenagers detailed feeling afraid or on edge, thirty-one percent announced they feel overpowered, and thirty percent revealed feeling discouraged or dismal because of worry in the month before the study. The discoveries recommend that numerous teenagers are encountering manifestations of worry in their day by day lives and that school is adding to understudy pressure. This study by the APA in 2014 shows how Adolescents are revealing abnormal amounts of stress when they have to take these tests. To sum up, Students all around the US panic and stress out about standardized tests, so why continue to have them suffer?
Lastly, They don’t measure a child’s level of skill in a valid way. As found by an examination of information from nineteen nationally representative examinations by Stanford University sociologist Sean Reardon,“The relationship between a family’s situation in the pay circulation and their kids’ scholastic accomplishment has become generously more grounded for the last fifty years.’ A student’s family may have unfortunate circumstances at home that can affect how well the student scores on their tests, which would not be a good example of the students learning ability. Also, A recent study showed that the differences of students that turned in their test scores against those that didn’t had a very insignificant variation in their graduation rates that was only zero point six percent.
This research was done by William Hiss, Former Dean of Admissions for Bates College. Standardized test scores don’t even prove anything regarding the student in the end. In fact, fifty to eighty percent of standardized test score advancements are short-term and began by changes that had no intention on being permanent, as said by a 2001 investigation posted by the Brookings Institution. The scores of the students aren’t even long term and don’t affect the student at all. In the end, Standardized test scores don’t consider the fact that students may have problems that are happening out of school that may affect them and the tests don’t even do anything for the student.
In conclusion, Schools should not have students take standardized tests because they take too much time, they are very stressful and they don’t measure a child’s level of skill in a valid way. Standardized tests take so much time that they even take away time students should have to talk about what is happening in the real world. They also cause students to experience abnormal amounts of anxiety and frustration that is very unhealthy. Lastly, they don’t take into consideration that students may have unfortunate circumstances happening at home. Standardized tests should no longer be a thing students are forced to constantly take.
