Standardized Testing, also known as state testing, is something dreaded among students. Let me paint you a picture. You walk into your homeroom on a Friday, but everyone is hidden behind dividers. Your teacher tells you to get ready for testing, and your mind is immediately filled with dread and misery. It’s two straight hours of A, C, D, A, B, and so on. Even the more intelligent kids don’t have a good time because you have to sit around for an hour and a half, waiting for Jeremy (sorry to all of the Jeremies) to finish question 17.

According to Procon.com, people argue that standardized tests only show which students are good at taking tests. They give no indication of progress, and have not improved student grades. They also say that the tests are racist, sexist, and all of the other lists with scores that are not related to future success.

Ascd.com reminds us that standardized tests weren’t developed by geniuses. They were developed by the minds of whoever decided to apply for the position of test writer. One of the founders of standardized testing, Lewis Terman, was racist. Another founder, Edward Thorndike, was a specialist in rats. Albert Einstein never created a standardized test, and neither did any of the great thinkers of our generation. Standardized tests are usually developed by researchers with PhDs in educational testing or educational psychology. If that’s the kind of mind you want your child to have, then go for it, they’ll fail. 

EdWeek.org says to make the tests shorter, and have three tests a year that are 30 minutes long, instead of 3 hours. They also pressure testing companies to reveal all scores, items, and everything to parents, teachers, and students to increase the value of the test scores.

If all of this isn’t enough to convince you to help to remove State Tests or to at least change them, then I don’t know what is. Maybe it’s the way your kids react when they come into a room with standardized tests on the desks, or maybe it’s when they get the score and break down. What you can do is help petitions and protests for testing companies to reveal all items to parents and teachers, so the tests are less valuable. Or, teachers, you could help to prepare even more by taking the test yourself, and the next year, using the level of difficulty that the last year had to adequately teach your students what they need to know. When society comes to sense is when standardized testing will be improved or removed.