Standardized Testing
Albert Einstein once said “Education is not learning of the facts but the training of the mind to think.” Standardized tests not only don’t teach well but they are also very unfair. There are many different studies that show that some people will do better on the test if they have factors they cannot control like their skin color, social class or if their relatives went to college. Even though many people are disadvantaged these tests still have a lot to do with your future. There should not be standardized testing because it is very unfairly advantaged.
Many kids do worse on standardized tests because of how or where they were born. For example, kids that have more money in their family should statistically do better. This gap for rich and poor students is almost twice the racial inequality in standardized tests (Rooks). The racial inequality for these tests is also a problem. Black and Latino students will consistently score lower that white kids (Rooks). There is also a theory that students whose grandparents went to college will have an easier time with the standardized tests (Rooks). Due to these many examples it is obviously unfair to make kids take standardized tests and have the schools funding depend on it.
We should stop standardized tests now. Schools have to make their kids take standardized testing because that’s part of the way they receive funding. These tests also determine what classes you will take next year and how good the teacher is. If not enough of their students pass they don’t get as much funding. So then the kids at the school can’t do better because the school doesn’t receive enough money. Then, they can’t help him/her or they might not even know the kid needs help. By the time the school realizes the kid needs extra help, it is probably too late. If the school does badly on standardized tests they should still give them enough money if not more money so they can hire better teachers and have better programs. Schools will also get off schedule about two weeks before the standardized test and start teaching their children what they need to know for the standardized tests to pass, this messes with their education because they suddenly start learning something new in the middle of the year. Some schools will spend about 22% of school that year preparing the children for standardized tests (Berger). Some of these tests like the SAT’s will determine whether or not that kid gets to go to college. Hundreds of colleges have stopped requiring SAT’s for admission into their college but that's not enough when 45,000 schools are still failing standardized testing (Berger).
How can we solve this problem? There is a simple solution, which would be to just stop making kids take standardized tests. You will still be able to tell if the kid should go in the advanced class or not by teacher recommendations and grades. Colleges can just look at your grades and extracurricular activities and not test scores. Schools can still get funding just not from standardized tests, but from donations or the government if their public. This problem would be extremely easy to fix, so why haven’t we?