For years standardized tests, such as the ACT, have been used as a way to rank students, determine their classes for the next year, and decide if they get into a college. Standardized testing does not show how smart a child is, it simply demonstrates how good they are at taking tests. It evaluates a student’s performance and alertness on one particular day, not in general. It is unfair to determine a child’s future with a test when it’s based on test- taking skills, and not actual knowledge. This is also unfair because many children, who are forced to take standardized tests have medical problems, such as anxiety. This leads to worse scores not because they know less than other children, but because they cannot think during the test because …show more content…
Ever since then, 850 colleges have followed and made it optional for their application too. Schools that stopped requiring test scores on their application report that they are pleased with their results. They also reported that more people applied, and that of the people that applied there was more diversity.
One solution people seem to believe will help this problem is giving parents the option to opt their student out of a specific test. Although this seems like a great solution, we now know that there is actually no way for a community to opt out of state-wide tests.
Many state school administrators and national groups representing big districts are working together to decrease the number of required standardized tests. The Council of Chief State School Officers and the Council of the Great City Schools, both of Washington, announced that they would review all the state and district tests that had been administered, and study how to eliminate unnecessary standardized tests. They came up with the realization that the best solution would be to have fewer yet better quality tests. Michael Casserly shared the data from national, state, and local tests and realized that students on average take 113 tests from kindergarten to 12th grade. Students should only be tested annually, and that's enough to document growth of learning for a