STANDARDIZED TESTS ARE NO

GOOD
Getting rid of the ACT/SAT

MAY 8, 2016
DAVID RIZK
3rd hour Leidecker

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Have you ever felt really stressed out knowing that you are going to take a
test in high school that will determine your whole college career and maybe your
future as well? Well that stress is just human nature. Some tests like the ACT and
SAT specifically can severely hurt some students in various ways. According to
the washingtonpost.com students are hurt by standardized test all over the country
for many different reasons. But also according to that same website, standardized
tests are not a fair judge for the following different ways. Time can affect the
students, stress can affect them, measure a small portion of knowledge, and can be
biased to certain backgrounds.
People who give these tests will tell us that they will help improve our
knowledge base. They will also tell us that it is a good tool that will help them
learn more about a student. They assume that it will be a good judge of a student
when being accepted to a college. Well these assumptions are wrong. Fairtest.org
says that for a student to be correctly different, students different needs must be
accommodated to. Also nea.org says that students of different languages are
pushed into taking these tests in English or course and not fairly assessed on their
real intellectual brilliance. Stress and time management also add the hysteria here.
As well as these tests being multiple choice which will be later mentioned to show
how it can ruin a students way of thinking.

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So now lets dig deeper into some seriously valid reasons these tests can be
hurting students or just not giving them the credit they deserve. The first topic at
hand is the stress these tests inflict on a student. When someone hears about a very
serious exam they will be taking later on in high school, it is human nature to
worry about it, when its said to determine your acceptance into college and
college is where your life takes off. Students feel stress throughout the whole exam
just because of its weight on their next few years. Not only is stress a factor but it
becomes a dangerous one when it comes to the fact that this test is also timed.
Stress under time only makes students guess and not think straight. This is spoken
of on link.springer.com. It talks about how when under pressure of time we are
forced the think in ways and do things we wouldnt normally do.
We all know that standardized tests are usually multiple choice test and if
you didnt, well now you do. Multiple choice is never a horrible testing option but
for a standardized test its not a very accurate indicator of what a student knows,
some will turn it into one big guessing game. Since these tests are said to
improve students, multiple choice is looking for one specific answer to a
question; while in real life there usually multiple answers to situations. Then why
do we teach our kids to always pick a specific answer? How can this improve
them? In fact, it really does hurt them by making students think that there is always

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one right answer. Statistics from alternet.org show that students show no
improvement in performance from taking standardized tests.
Now what if you were a foreign student moving to America because your
country is simply just not safe enough to live in anymore. Lets face it, we all have
trouble learning a new language. Some students are new to America and looking to
be successful here. Dont they deserve a fair chance as Americans? These tests
were written in English and given to every student whether they can comprehend
them or not. Some very smart students will score poorly due to their lack of
understanding the language. Why should a smart student who works slowly and
cant speak the language as well as others be degraded by a test such as the
ACT/SAT when applying to college? Just doesnt seem fair at all!
All in all, we see now that there are multiple faults to taking standardized
tests. There are foreign geniuses being denied a fair test of knowledge. There are
students who cannot handle stress and timing. Also there is the fact that the way
the tests are administered in the multiple choice format program students to work
like robots. These are all very solid reason why standardized test as a very poor
and unjust way of judging potential geniuses. With all that being said, there are too
many ways these tests fail to examine students. This is why standardized tests are
no good to us.

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Works Cited Page:

1. Washingtonpost.com
2. Fairtest.org
3. Nea.org
4. Link.springer.com
5. Alternet.org