Dear Future President,

I have heard this issue been talked about a lot;it is whether we should keep standardized testing or not. Personally, I believe that we should end standardized testing.

First, Standardized tests don’t give any feedback on how to do better. In terms of my life, I like to know why I got a, for instance, math problem wrong so I can fix it later. But when you get your test scores back, it just shows what grade you got, and not how you can improve your skills and/or how you can fix it. It also shows if you got advanced or not. I know kids who feel dumb because they didn’t get advanced, and that’s not fair.

Another thing is, students get very nervous during the tests. Some stay up very late studying and end up being tired during the test and potentially falling asleep. Some students tend to also throw up before the test because they are so nervous. Then they end up not doing as well because they feel sick. This happened to my brother last time he took the STAAR test, except he didn’t throw up. Both of these things are not good for the kids health or mind.

Also, students sometimes have a bad day. You had a bad day before. You know how it feels. Maybe they will forget the concept or something. They might mess up on a bunch of problems. Or they might accidentally bubble wrong. This happened to me when I took the PSAT earlier this year. Well technically I thought I bubbled wrong, but I had bubbled right I was just on a different section. Then I tried to fix it but the time ran out.

Anyway, another thing is cheating. Cheating is a big issue because everyone has done it at least once. Students do it. But teachers? Recent cheating scandals involving teachers and administrators in Atlanta and dozens of other cities have been directly linked to the pressure to raise test scores, according to Washington post. Now that is just not good for anyone.

In 2015, 67% of all public school parents say that there is too much emphasis on testing. But, 14% or parents say that testing is very important. This is according to nea Today. You can see that most parents do not like standardized testing. Also, whenever I take standardized tests, my teachers say that they like them just as much as we do(and we don't like them).

I know that people say that “Oh, it helps the district to see where the school is at”, but that just makes it more stressful on the students if their school has bad test scores.

Because of cheating, bad days, nervousness, and lack of feedback, I do not think we should keep standardized tests. I think we should make a law that standardized testing is not mandatory. I hope that you will take my opinion into consideration. Have a great day.

Sincerely,

Alyssa B

Credit

to:http://neatoday.org/2015/08/23/poll-americans-want-less-standardized-testing-and-more-school-funding/

And https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/22/11-problems-created-by-the-standardized-testing-obsession/

And http://edge.ascd.org/blogpost/15-reasons-why-standardized-tests-are-problematic