Is the Price too High for Standardized Tests?

By Olivia Rawiel - 11th grade

Have you ever taken a standardized test and asked yourself: What's the point of this? How does this help me succeed? Why am I still doing this?

You are not alone. 

Standardized tests like the SAT, ACT, and regents have recently brought up several questions about how these tests reflect our education as students. Because of social media and other modern ideas that are popping up, we are forced to take a step back and really consider what standardized testing does for our community. 

When you look deeper into the effects, you start noticing things like outdated articles in the English section of the SAT, information that doesn’t really matter in the context of real life and the pressure of a single question, right or wrong, that can determine whether or not you get into your dream college. 

“Standardized tests often result in students who are bored and unenthusiastic about their education.” says study.com, when summarizing the negative effects of these tests. It is unhelpful and discouraging to have kids coming out of their classrooms with no real respect for the information they are being taught. 

Plus, memory has never been a good way to measure education. Just being able to stuff facts into your brain and then spit them out when the time comes is not a good form for learning, especially if it means that being good at the memory card name means you deserve to go to a top-priority school. 

Irisreading.com elaborates on this, saying: “It doesn't allow you a deep understanding of any information. You only get to memorize the bare facts such as multiplication tables or vocabulary. In addition, rote learning doesn't allow for complex connections between new and previous knowledge.” 

In making students sit at isolated desks with no conversation or intercourse, students are also encouraged to work alone. We are taught not to work with others, hanging off of the idea that we fail alone and succeed alone and that we can’t share our experiences and ideas with anyone else. This leads to a world where even adults work detached from their peers and environment when they should be working with each other in creating something bigger and better than themselves. Through this encouraged connection with others, we could have a world where people choose to work with their community and attempt to compromise in distressing situations, instead of having distrust and violence be the underlying factor of many American jobs and workplaces. 

Finally, tests like the SAT and ACT tend to favor higher income students, focusing on social status rather than the student as an individual. “Wealthy students earn higher SAT scores compared to their low-income peers and that the difference in SAT scores between high- and low-income students was twice as large among black students compared to white students.” says the School of Social Policy and Practice. This means that these tests don't prioritize students and what they could become, but rather who the system believes that they are and should be. They set many students up for failure before they even take their pencils out. 

Standardized tests should be reconsidered and adapted before the single scratch of a pencil or the glaring red mark of a mistake can dictate a student's future. No one should suffer the long term consequences of a short term mistake. We, as students, can not be measured by a single sheet of paper. We are far more complex than the system we are graded by. Things should not stay the same.

*https://www.pbs.org/newshour/classroom/classroom-voices/student-voices/2024/02/student-voice-is-the-price-too-high-for-standardized-tests