Dear future president,

“Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid”

-Albert Einstein

I am writing to you today because standardized testing needs to change because it doesn’t reflect student learning,and ruins student self esteem.Standardized testing also impacts a teacher’s pay when they have the most important job in the world, They have to shape a child’s mind and are for some obscenely idiotic reason they are underpaid. Why should we underpay the people that shape the minds of our future? 

I am an american high school student in Ohio and I myself am appalled by the way students spend nearly a third of our time preparing for SATs and ACTs,and that takes away from things that we should really learn. Standardized tests deny creativity because and enforces conformity when we really need creative people like Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawkings,Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. These great men all refused to play by the rules of normal conformal school. “Sometimes, the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds”.(Ravitch)

Standardized testing lowers students self esteem by making them feel they go to school for nothing more than these tests, and the number on a piece of paper is the only thing that's important.We also never get to learn about the things we should be learning about like life skills. In 2014 alone 1,845,787 students took the ACT and 1,672,395 students took the SAT.For the ACT alone that is 4614467.5 hours spent on the test alone not counting the preparing for the test.

We need to shorten tests and increase teacher pay.If doctors get paid for doing heart surgery and saving a person’s life a teacher should make the same amount for being able to shape a child’s life.Teachers are just as stressed out about tests as students,they have to help snotty kids learn something that neither care about.Some may say that the tests are important but what are they really important for if kids don’t learn from them.

sincerely,adam

Tag, By. "A Quote by Diane Ravitch." Goodreads. Goodreads, 9 May 2015. Web. 07 Nov. 2016.