You wake up in the morning. You go to school. You see your friends who look even more tired then normal. You ask, “What’s up?” They say, “Aren’t you worried for the physics test today?” You think a bunch of profanity, then immediately run to a class room to try to cram, worrying the whole time until you get your test grade back whether or not you did good. Chances are, you aren’t going to get an A on this one, in part because you were too nervous to do good.
These situations happen quiet frequently during the course of a school day, but what is even worse is when it comes to the Standardized Tests. I remember forever ago when I was little, that my teachers told me not to study for these tests, and we would spend the day or two before the test doing sample problems to prepare for them. Well nowadays, my brother has been preparing for this test since the beginning of the school year, and has been studying for countless hours at home for it. Now just think, all that time spent doing this for a couple hour test, just so that the state can monitor how the students and schools and teachers, all the way down the pipe line, are doing. But is this test even a fair representation of how smart the students are? Or how well the teachers are teaching? I think not. I saw an article on Facebook the other day about the third grade tests, which is the very beginning of the Common Core testing. Reading through it, there was some stuff that I didn’t learn how to do until middle school or even high school. In my opinion, cramming all of this information at the kids is only going to make them resent school even more then they already do.
These tests have also been effecting the teachers by causing many of them to quit teaching. Most of the teachers do not want to have to teach for a test, they want to teach because they want to make a difference in students lives, and influence them. Teachers’ attrition has increased by more than fifty percent in the past decade (Davidson). Administering tests and processing applications imposes added burden to overworked school counselors and college admissions officers. All the time spent on tests is time not spent on improving teaching approaches (Asch).
The No Child Left Behind laws only mandate progress in math and reading. There is incentive for students to improve in these subjects. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on test- preparation materials, while other subjects are being left behind. There is no incentive to teach the arts, sciences, history, literature, geography, foreign languages or physical education (Ravitch).
Davidson, Cathy N. “A Model T Test in the Internet Age.” Washington Post. 25 Sep. 2011 B.5. Web. 18 Mar. 2015.
Ravitch, Diane. “Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform.” Wall Street Journal. 09 Mar 2010. A.21. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.
Asch, Chris Myers, and Jennifer Dounay Zinth. “Should Students Be Required to Take the SAT or ACT, and Apply…” American Teacher. 03 Mar 2012. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.
Do YOU Feel Safe? 