Standardized testing has become the bane of every student's existence. Come testing time, you'll hear a cacophonous mixture of groans and heads thumping against desks. Both student and teachers hate testing with a passion. Thanks to John Oliver's segment on testing I have more reason to hate the damn things beyond the fact that they're stupid. Edwards (My chic English teacher) assigned us a "Build a Better School" project. One of the facets of this project was to talk about testing. I may have gone a little bit overboard. Below is the small essay I wrote for that bullet point, that got rejected.
"The reasons behind our dis involvement with standardized testing are as follows.
The standardized testing industry is exactly that, an industry. Pearson Education is the largest distributor of standardized tests. They control over 40% of the testing market. They have had a spectacular business as of late, even though they have had countless complaints filed against them. Giving students a test that doesn't benefit them, while wasting time teaching for that test in class, seems like a pretty bad idea. All for a business to maintain its projected growth? At what cost does this business operate. To my knowledge it’s at the cost of teachers and students. Both who could better spend that time learning. Whose time is better spent preparing themselves for higher education and a successful life.
The standardized tests such as smarter balance testing have been the subject of walkouts all across the nation. Nathan Hale high school in Seattle saw an entire class of juniors refuse to take the smarter balance test. Meaning, any resources put forth to administer said test would be wasted. Once again standardized tests waste time and resources for schools who may not have money to waste.
These tests also have extremely negative impact on students. Causing major anxiety and in some case actual physical harm. On standardized test in Ohio actually has instructions on what to do if a student vomits on their test. The test also reflects negatively on students who may be passing their classes, but don’t test well. One such incident happened in Florida with an eighth grader who was taking an AP English class. She was asked to leave this class that she had outstanding grades in all because of her score on the FCAT."
I had no conclusion because it was already to long and I'm pretty sure at that point I was ranting. Go to Business Insider to see where I got parts of my information. As well as watch John Oliver talk about the subject much better than I do.
Have Fun and Testing is dumb.
😎
\\.Jukebox.//
Little bit of something.
Little bit of something.
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"Failure is always an option."-Adam Savage
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