Dear Madame/Mr. President:

I am writing to you about an issue that many students and their parents have a problem with. That issue is the standardized tests that we take throughout our 12 years in school. I believe that standardized tests are worthless and we can measure intelligence in other ways. Albert Einstein once said that “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life thinking that it’s stupid.” This is true with students because everyone is different and every student learns in different ways. One student can be more intelligent than another but do worse on a test, and then that test will “reflect their intelligence” and I think that is not fair.

Another reason I believe that we should stop doing standardized tests is because many teachers have started “teaching to the test.” If there is something that can be learned that will be useful in your future life, or just something compelling and interesting, but if it won’t be on the test, teachers won’t bother teaching us that. This is why tons of students hate school. Schools should be a place where we be creative and learn new things that will help us in our everyday lives, instead we come here and be bored out of our minds for 8 hours.

Some people might argue that standardized tests are good and should be given to students. They think that the tests are necessary because it’s the best and only way to hold schools accountable for their academic performance. Even so, simple numbers aren’t enough to fully and fairly see what abilities the student actually has. I think it’s unfair because not every person is born with the same skill set as their peers, and everyone has their own strengths and needs academically. Also, even if this was an effective way, the costs associated with the tests are way too high! On average, standardized tests are costing states $1.7 billion. That’s $1.7 billion that we could put towards building new schools or getting new equipment or anything other than tests.

If we can’t stop standardized tests all together, we should at least lower the amount we take. On average students take 113 tests between k-12. This problem has not only affected me, but countless students across the U.S. I think it’s time to do something about this problem. All testing does is cause stress and make the states spend a bunch of money. As president i’m hoping you can put an end to this, and make learning fair and fun!

Sincerely,

Andrey L.