To the President of the United States,

I’d like to humbly thank you for selecting to read my letter.  I am honored in ways that can’t be expressed.

This letter is to shed some light on standardized testing. I believe that it is semi-useful, sort of like an archaic typewriter. Standardized testing was appropriate, convenient even, back in the days of corporal punishment; however, in these modern days of Mac-Books and slideshows, it becomes apparent that the old methods are inadequate in these five ways:

1. Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance. A study by the Brookings Institution said that fifty to eighty percent of year-over-year test score improvements were temporary, not long term.                                                                                                                                     
   
2. Standardized tests are unfair and discriminate against non-English speakers and students with special needs. Learners of English take tests in English before they have mastered the language, and special education students take the same tests as others, without receiving the accommodations usually provided to them as part of their IEP.                                                                       
3. “Teaching to the test” is replacing good learning practice with “drill n’ kill” learning. A five-year University of Maryland study concluded that the pressure that teachers were feeling to ‘teach to the test" barred teachers from teaching in higher-order thinking and complex assignments.                       
   
4. Standardized testing causes severe stress in younger students. This has gone so far that in the Stanford-9 exam, it has instructions on what to do with a test booklet in case a student vomits on it.                                                                                                                                                                                
5. Standardized tests are an imprecise measure of teacher performance, yet they are used to reward and punish teachers. Teachers know what they are doing; tests should not decide if they are acceptable or not.

Sincerely,

Michael