I am a resident of Sunny Isles Beach, FL and I am writing because there are many struggling kids that are under a lot of stress for a young age.

Many kids are struggling to take the classes that they need or want to take because they scored a failing score on EOC. The tests scores don’t actually measure the skills that were taught. I believe that a child’s ability should be measured by classwork, creativity, and complex problem solving. One reason I believe that we should take out the state tests is because the tests aren’t a reliable measure of how much students know and how well teachers can teach. Many kids have very bad anxiety when it comes to taking test. The kids get very nervous and can’t think correctly. Another reason why is because schools spend too much time prepping for the test rather than actually teaching them something useful. Teachers tend to spend a lot of time preparing for the test to make their status go higher. This practice can hinder a student’s overall learning potential. But teachers shouldn’t be doing this. Teachers shouldn’t be teaching us for the test, they should be teaching us for a higher knowledge and learn information correctly instead of going through chapters rapidly and hardly getting to know them. Also Standardized testing evaluates a student’s performance on one particular day and does not take into account external factors. Some student have bad days, they may have a family problem that has been bugging them for a while and they can’t concentrate or retake it a different day. The tests are one day and one day only, you do not have a choice to not take it just because we have a migraine. The final reason is because students know that test scores may affect their future lives, they do whatever they can to pass them, including cheating and taking performance drugs. Since these test are so pressured on us to pass so we can create a future and career for ourselves we harm ourselves to do it. We stay up late cramming for the test which means we get no sleep, which them makes us cheat because cramming does no good to us. We then turn to drugs, enhancing drugs. All these reasons are valid reasons for us struggling students to turn down and not take the standardized test, I believe we can overturn the test and help us into a better future.

Sincerely Isabella Grek