Standardized Testing Needs To Be Banned!

 Standardized testing has been a very unsituated topic, as many people say that it’s beneficial and some say it's not. Well, standardized testing needs to be banned immediately.  Standardized testing causes too much stress, it wastes a lot of money,  and doesn’t test the student’s full capabilities.

First of all, standardized testing causes too much stress. Students are given tons of homework to finish, especially in middle and high school. Students already spend an average of 4 hours doing their homework, and along with that they have standardized tests to worry about as well. According to the American Test Anxieties Association, 20 percent of students suffer from severe test anxiety and 18 percent suffer from moderate test anxiety. When students are told that if you don’t pass this test, you will not proceed to the next grade level and stay back a grade. This doesn’t exactly help the matter of students having a lot of stress and test anxiety, it makes it worse.  “The STAAR test gives me bad anxiety,” said Christopher Lopez, “It feels like a lot of pressure on me and I don’t know what to do.” As you can see, this proves the point of standardized testing causing too much stress, and Christopher isn’t the only person facing this anxiety because of standardized testing. Plus, in many classes students are taught on test taking skills rather than studying for the actual test. This is due to the fact that standardized testing causes stress, which impels the teacher to focus on test taking skills. Even when taking the test students are given a 4 hour time limit which stresses the student to finish the test in time. 

Secondly, standardized testing wastes too much money.  According to the Texas Education Agency, standardized testing costs the United States 1.7 billion dollars, along with another 699 million dollars every year for elementary school testing. In fact, the creators of these tests get about 90 million dollars a year! In a study conducted by businessinsider.com, teachers who work hard everyday of their lives have an average salary of 63, 645, which is a lot less than 90 million. Teachers are the ones who are there to supervise and help the students in the standardized testing, and they don’t even get extra pay when doing this. Instead of wasting so much money on standardized testing, it would be better to increase the teachers salary or use it to improve education conditions. Plus, teachers are ones who spend more than 14 days preparing us for the standardized tests. Not to mention, almost 50% of teachers quit their jobs due to low wages. According to tcf.org,  the United States is underfunded by 150 billion dollars from grades K-12, causing the lack of education resources for more than 30 million students! So spending more than 1.7 billion dollars on unnecessary testing (standardized) wouldn’t be wise when you’re underfunded by 150 billion dollar from grades K-12. 

Lastly, standardized testing doesn’t test the students' full ability. Appercently, one test determines what you have learned throughout the whole school year, and if you don’t do well on it, you stay back a grade. Some people just don’t do good when it comes to tests and some have good and bad days for tests as well! Not to mention, these standardized tests cause a lot of stress and when you are feeling stressed, your brain tends to think differently. In fact, your grade which goes throughout the school year isn’t even taken into consideration! A school year’s material is summarized into approximately 30 questions, meaning  for ⅓ of a month you get one question. Plus, you get a limited amount of time of four hours, which doesn’t help. If you miss questions because of not having enough time, that might just mean that you’re a slow worker, it doesn’t mean you didn’t understand the school year’s material. In addition, in high school you choose one life career you’re interested in. A lot of times standardized  testing does not relate to your life goal. You may want to be an artist or an athlete, which doesn’t have much connection to school subjects (history, math, science, reading, writing). 

As you can see, standardized testing has had seriously dreadful sides. Standardized testing causes too much stress, it wastes a lot of money, and doesn’t test the students full capabilities. As parents and educators you must think about your child/student and fight for banning standardized testing. I hope you will make the right choice.