Dear future President of the United States,

Imagine a world where one test defines your future. One mistake and it is all over, your dreams and possibly your career. Students all over the United States face this problem and fear that their future would be ruined by this one test that doesn’t help anyone. Your policies should provide students protection of how standardized testing affects their mental health, allowing kids to move on even if they did poorly on the test, and make a fair test for children who are English language learners and kids with special needs.

The night before a big test is the worst. Kids are crying, studying until midnight, and skipping meals just so they can pass the test that determines their future. Many parents complain that the state is putting too much pressure on their kids and that they can’t get control of them. Standardized testing messes with students minds a lot and it affects them in many different ways. The children might get bad ideas and do something bad to themselves. “According to education researcher Gregory J. Cizek, anecdotes abound ‘illustrating how testing... produces gripping anxiety in even the brightest students, and makes young children vomit or cry, or both.’”(ProCon) Creating anxiety for the test takers makes them do worse than they actually will on the test. Do you really want kids to feel like a 1,000 pound boulder is on their shoulders or a light feather? If this problem is not solved, then it will get worse as more and more people start taking the test.

Some students are full of joy and happiness since they passed the test while others are lonely because their friends moved on and they didn’t. If you were in that situation, would you be delighted that you were held back or heartbroken? Most people would be heartbroken, and they would be thinking that one test score should not determine if a person moves on or not. “The purpose is to evaluate a student's ability and to see if they are eligible to reach to the next level... However, standardized tests does not properly evaluate a student's critical thinking skills and seems unfair.”(Bates) Standardized tests don’t include everything that was taught to student during the whole school year, and that isn't fair. Everyone has good days and bad days, and judging kids on the test that may be taken on their bad day can devastate their life. “‘This is not a valid way to measure an entire child,” said Jensen, a former teacher with two children in high school. “None of this has anything to do with better education.’"(White House) We should have another way to see the student’s skills instead of testing them under rigorous pressure. As years go by more and more people are starting to see the disadvantages of standardized testing.

Many people move to the United States from different countries for many different reasons, but after those children go to school in America for the first time, they have trouble with the school system and especially the testing process. Expecting them to pass the hardest test in the whole school year is unreasonable. “However, when ELL students attended public schools with at least a minimum threshold number of white students...This suggests that the lag in test score achievement of ELL students is attributable in part to the characteristics of the public schools they attend.”(Fry) Kids with learning disorders and ELL students have to take the same test as everyone else,and that isn't fair because they should be able to have special help and different tests to make it understandable for them. ELL and students with learning disorders should get easier tests than everyone else to make it less complicated for them. If the state or federal government doesn’t change this, many people that come into the United States may leave.

In conclusion, I think that the government should fix the standardized testing issues and make it fair for everyone. Standardized testing should be able to be put intact without messing with the student’s brain. Students also shouldn't be moved or held back based on that one number. Kids with disorders and non English speakers should have an advantage on the test to make it fair. All of these missing terms in the testing policy have caused problems over the years and I think that the time has come that we fix those problems for future test takers. The future generations should not suffer like we did. To make their lives better, lets help our government shape the new testing process.

Works Cited

ProCon.org. "Standardized Tests ProCon.org." ProCon.org. 31 Aug. 2016, 11:52 a.m., standardizedtests.procon.org/

Bates, Cheyann -. "Is Standardized Testing Truly Effective?" By Cheyann B. N.p., 26 Oct. 2016. Web. 04 Nov. 2016.

"White House Tells States to Give Students Fewer Tests." Newsela. N.p., 5 Feb. 2016. Web. 04 Nov. 2016.

Fry, Richard. "The Role of Schools in the English Language Learner Achievement Gap." Pew Research Centers Hispanic Trends Project RSS. N.p., 26 June 2008. Web. 04 Nov. 2016.