Dear Future President,

Even though i’m just a teenager and I don’t get to vote, I don’t think we should have so many state tests for school. It’s not just me that thinks we shouldn’t have so much state testing there are a lot of other people that do too like teachers and parents. I do go to school though and I do take all the tests so I should actually have a big say about how long the tests are and what they should look like. The government needs to find out how to get rid of some of the tests or how to shorten our tests soon. I don’t want to be taking so many tests for another four years of school. I also don’t want my little brother to have to suffer through all the tests when he’s older. Schools should not have so much testing or any at all.

There are many problems with state testing for kids such as stress. So many kids get stressed before and during the tests. This is because they're long, boring, and there are so many of them. Each school year, students spend about twenty to twenty-five hours taking standardized tests. At the end of the school year students don’t look forward to taking tests they look forward to the warm summer with their friends. I honestly don’t know of anyone that’s like, “I’m so excited to take this test it’s going to be so easy and it won’t be boring at all.”

What should be done to fix this? There’s a lot of ways the state government could eliminate the amount of tests we take. Some ways they could fix it is instead of spending money to make more tests, they could spend the money trying to see if there is any tests that overlap. Or if they have low-quality tests those could be taken away. Some of the tests probably don’t have any meaning for us but were still taking them. Also, we don’t learn half the stuff that is on the tests.

Honestly, I don’t think anything is helping with this issue because if the government eliminates say three tests there's still like 5 others that we still have to take because we have two for each subject. Between prekindergarten and 12th grade, students take about 112 standardized exams.

It’s up to you future president to fix this problem. Everyone would really appreciate not doing state testing anymore because no one likes it. Students won't be stressed out as much anymore. They won’t have to worry about acing the exam. So future president, what is your plan, how are you going to fix this?

Sincerely,

Brooklyn W