Dear Next President,

“All students can learn and succeed, but not all on the same day, in the same way.” The problem with standardized testing is that teachers and administrators have too many tests; they need to either have M-Step or NWEA. Schools do standardized tesst to see what the kids are learning and what they know. But students are doing too much testing and it's getting in the way of their learning. The president should limit how many standardized tests that we have to do. Standardized testing takes too much time. It takes about 4 weeks just to finish NWEA in language arts, science, and math. Tests take away learning time for the students and the teaching time for the teachers.

Everybody gets stressed out about standardize tests. About 11% of the children surveyed reported severe psychological and physiological symptoms tied to the assessment. The tests are not always accurate and don't always show what kids know. They also don't tell all the aspects of learning. They don't test on things like creativity, endurance, and leadership. Administrators are firing people because of the kids' scores when they aren't even accurate.

I'm against standardized testing. Just a little bit of testing would be fine, so the teachers can actually teach us something. Also teachers woouldn't lose their job and schools wouldn't get shut down. Maybe we could only have either M-Step or NWEA. If we keep testing as we are, when people get older, they will only know how to take test. In 2005, 39% of public-school parents said that schools test the kids too much. Students are going into jobs and really only knowing how to take tests because they took so many tests that they didn't get to learn.

Sincerely,

Katie

7th grade

Evart Middle School

Evart, MI