Standardized Testing Argumentative Analysis

Imagine yourself sitting in a classroom, with a test that consists of 75 questions sitting in front of you. You can feel the tension all throughout the school. Your nerves are rattled. You have prepared for this test for months. This test is a determinant of your further education. Stressful, right? Kids all across America do this every day. Standardized testing has started playing a significant role in school’s systems, such as determining what colleges students might get accepted into, if they pass/fail a grade, or if they get credit for taking a class; naturally, students are going to stress about and overthink these tests. Not that testing is a negative aspect of schooling, but if so much did not depend on these tests it wouldn’t be so …show more content…
Often, after these tests are taken, the information once memorized is forgotten to memorize new information for a new test. Some teachers will even admit that they teach to make sure that students pass these tests, not to make sure that students actually learn and take in this information to use later on in life. “Constant high-stakes testing causes students to interpret all their assessments as summative rather than as interactions meant to help their learning process, eroding the value of formative assessments to the teacher and student” (Teachers Take an Ethical Stand). By saying that students interpret their assignments as summative, they mean that they are only focusing on the outcome of their grades, instead of learning the material that is being taught. Students worry more about remembering information for tests. Honestly, some school systems do not care if students will use the information that is being taught later on in life, as they only care about the passing and failing percentages in their systems: that is the problem. Usually at the end of a course, teachers begin reviewing with their students. As soon as review starts, so does the stress. School systems HIGHLY strain the importance of passing these tests. Although the school systems try to make students believe that these tests should not be stressful and these scores matter, “[t]est scores fail as measures of …show more content…
Students stress about passing or failing their test or course. Teachers stress about teaching the material and reviewing to make sure it is still instilled in the students. Parents stress about their child’s grade and if they pass or not. Stress should not be a part of school. School should be a place to go and learn, to make friends, to make memories, and to make a life for themselves after school, without worrying about their grades. Some students have a genuine passion for learning and for school, but tests are starting to put a strain on these passions. A test should not stand between someone and their dream job, dream college, or anything else that they are aspiring for in life. But then again, it is impossible to not stress about things like these, as society has made it this way. The closer to a test, the more stress builds up on everyone in the school environment. As this stress builds up on everyone, this stress could start to put student and teacher relationships at risk. A virtuous relationship should be kept between he student and teachers, which makes school a more natural environment where there is no hatred or hard feelings in the air. Granted, grades are important, but never more important than the mental and emotional health of a student. No student should ever think of school as a living

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