“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Many of us have heard this famous quote by Albert Einstein, but do all of us know how true and real the meaning of it is? Inspirational speaker, Prince Ea, believes that “many kids can relate to that fish, swimming upstream in class, never finding their gifts, thinking they are stupid, believing they are useless” (Prince). Standardized tests and common core are prime instigators of those feelings by teaching students that they have to fit into the cookie-cutter mold just to be successful. These methods are designed as one-size-fits-all, but most of us know that one size doesn’t always fit all. These …show more content…
This is false, however, because the tests are not truly designed to show strengths and weaknesses. For example, to accurately investigate strengths and weaknesses, a forty-five question English standardized test must allocate 15 questions to grammar, 15 questions to reading comprehension, and 15 questions to spelling. Standardized tests that students take today do not have an even spread of questions in the field, therefore they are not an accurate representation. They say that these tests show the improvement of students in a certain field. A study conducted by the Brookings Institution “found that fifty to eighty percent of year-over-year test score improvements were temporary and ‘caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning’” …show more content…
Act was passed, but that was the past. This is the present. The world has advanced and schools do not need standardized tests and common core to create factory students anymore. It needs more creative thinkers, more innovative minds. Students are the future. Do we want the United States to advance, or should we be stuck in the past, training students to work in factories, as Prince Ea says, “making them compete to get an A: a letter that determines product quality, hence grade A meat,” (Prince). Do we want schools to continue using standardized tests to teach students that bubbling in an answer is the way to succeed? Standardized tests are controlled and created by large profit organizations who are only looking to make money. These companies are increasing the difficulty of the tests and programs like common core are stamping out all forms of individuality and creativity. In doing this, they make it harder for students to believe that they are needed, to believe that they can be the ones to cure cancer or to end world hunger, just because one test told them that they weren’t good at math, or science, or English. Think about it. Should we let these tests kill the spirit of the young minds that will shape the