Significance of Testing: Being Seen as a Number
For years, standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT have been stressed for their importance in our futures, for our test scores determine our value as students. These tests have been supported with claims such as their effectiveness in predicting a student's future performance in a higher education; however, at what cost to the students? We are taught all the positive outcomes that come along with testing; however, the negative aspects such as stress, fear, and its failure to represent all a person has worked towards are concealed as if they don’t affect students as negatively as they do. Standardized testing should be taken off its pedestal built of the anxiety of students and replaced by
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The idea that scores, numbers, and statistics are all a student has to be represented by has been jammed down his throat until he believes it is the only way to breathe. With that said, the only thing that runs through student's mind is the tremendous possibility of failure, failure to ensure his number is seen above all the other numbers, failure to make his parents proud, failure to live up to all expectations he has built for himself. To some teenagers, devastatingly, there is no point in continuing a life they've already "ruined". Liang Choon Wang's discussion paper reveals the relationship testing has had with the demise of students; "A cross-country correlation also reveals that teenagers living in countries with high international standardized test performance are more likely to commit suicide." This creates a more important question: Is this pressure these tests bring worth the evaluation that can't even accurately evaluate a student's