tandardized Tests Should NOT Be Mandatory
Thousands of teenagers per year are turned away from the college of their dreams because their SAT scores were not high enough. A lot of students’ plans are ruined because they didn’t score well on one of the mandatory standardized tests. In high school, students can be forced to repeat the grade if they don’t score high enough on standardized tests. After high school, they can be denied by colleges because they didn’t score well enough on these tests.
Standardized tests are an unreliable way to measure a student’s intelligence level. Every student tests differently. Some people may test well and do great, while others get more stressed and freak out. There are some students that might excel in math but fail in English. In 2001 the Brookings Institute published an article showing that 50-80% of the year-over-year test scores were not
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Students have to worry about studying and knowing everything they were taught. After studying all of the given information, they take the test and realize that a lot of what they studied was not on the test. Education researcher Gregory J. Cizek has said, “illustrating how testing...produces gripping anxiety in even the brightest students…” Standardized testing stresses teachers out because they have to make sure they teach everything they need to by a certain date. They run on a strict teaching schedule when teaching students that will be taking a standardized test.
Some students don’t take standardized tests seriously because it doesn’t affect their grades. These students don’t understand that by not taking these tests seriously, they are lowering their chances of getting accepted to colleges. In 2004, an English teacher at New Mexico’s Valley High School said that many 11th grade students just “had fun” with the tests, and that the students made patterns when filling in the answers on the