Ah, Standardized Testing...

SATs, ACTs, and a variety of state or regional testing are students’ most nightmarish annoyance. You spend three to six hours meticulously filling in the dreaded bubble sheets. Answering questions everyone else is answering, robotically filling in essay sections, and mentally cursing the person who designed this boring torture device. Why is this test so important anyway? It’s a test deciding what standards you should meet and when. High schools in Rhode Island have passing this fiend of a state test compulsory to graduate and be on your way to college.

Recently, fifty adults from Rhode Island took the NECAP, the state test for the northeastern region. Sixty percent failed, earning a score within the range of “substantially below proficient”. Rhode Island has begun to implement a new policy requiring high school students to pass the NECAP in order to graduate high school as of this year. The purpose of a state test is simply to see where students are at in their education, not to deem an individual as able to graduate or not. If the NECAP is so important that you have to pass it in order to get out of high school, why can’t an adult pass it?

The thing about standardized tests as a general is they are merely standard. They do measure a student’s expanse of factual information, and allow the state to gauge a school as a whole. That in itself can be expanded into a whole argument over whether the government can decide what a student can learn and when. However, using these tests to declare a student able to move on to their future endeavors is a bit silly. Out in the “real world” you need so much more than facts moseying around your brain. You need to be able to think, be creative, be innovative, be individual. There is no test for that, nor does our system have the goal of teaching those things.

There’s another concept; standardized tests force teachers to base their curriculum solely on preparing a student for the content on the test rather than allowing the students to soak up and learn as much as possible. The rest of your life shouldn’t be balancing on whether you pass or fail a state mandated test. School is made for learning right? Not for taking a test. It is superfluous to use a state test to decide whether you graduate or not.

I understand the use of standardized testing as a means for the state to see how schools are doing. That is completely understandable since public education is in the hands of the government. But please, don’t abuse the system.