The high school experience is characterized by the rites of passage denoting young adulthood. The endless stream of classes, football games, proms, and finding a self-identity allows teenagers to become adults who are ready to leave their mark on society. However, this process is greatly hindered by the daunting standardized testing system that causes significant anxiety and burnout among students, with ramifications affecting them for the rest of their lives.
Students are forced to arduously study for one exam after another that is believed to define their aptitude, a score determining their worth and intelligence. The American education system has allowed itself to be shakily built upon the unreliable stones of standardized tests, and for students to truly benefit from a profitable education, this must end.
Clutching their pencil as they open a test booklet, students are annually faced with exams that define their future and their school’s reputation and funding. Edutopia, a site created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation to discuss innovation for education, notes the physical suffering of students during standardized tests in a recent article.
When handling a stressful situation, cortisol – a stress hormone in the body – increases. On exam days the hormone will “rise by an average of 15 percent, a physiological response linked to an 80-point drop in SAT scores” according to 2018 research conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research. For students living with additional difficulty outside of school, whether it be in the community or at home, “cortisol spiked by as much as 35 percent, a level that is likely to derail cognitive processes and distort test scores beyond recognition.”
Due to the undeniable stress evoked by a crucial test, students’ scores will automatically decrease, melting under the pressure they are subjected to. It is unjust for a child’s academic value to be measured by circumstances that were skewed before they even arrived at their testing center. And the additional physical toll that alters the immune system and slows growth, as mentioned by the Mayo Clinic, is merely another surplus of harm that students must bear.
Furthermore, standardized testing negatively affects teachers as well as students since they must too often center their classrooms around success on exams. This reality can cause immense frustration towards a system that prevents them from truly educating and impacting pupils.
In a survey taken by the Georgia Department of Education in 2015, the main reason a teacher would quit is due to the “number and emphasis of mandated tests.” Moreover, of all who were surveyed, an astounding 14,699 responses mentioned testing as a complaint of the career, with answers usually including the curriculum in relation to tests, what students endure to perform well, and how the institution itself does not reflect what learning ought to be.
These frustrations spread beyond Georgia and across the nation in an explicit cry for change for the sake of their students, themselves, and the future. In a National Education Association article, middle school English teacher Chad Donohue speaks for many educators when he declares that although tests are needed, the flaw of standardized testing is that they are traps, not a chance for students to show their improvement.
“Assessments can be a positive experience if the teacher and student work together to ensure learning and allow for improvement,” Donahue argued. “But high-stakes tests do not allow for this sort of interaction.” He found that over the course of his decades-long career, the current testing system prohibits productive learning and advancement, while also being harmful to students’ development and mental well-being lamenting that “they look overwhelmed and exhausted.”
In a 2023 article from the National Educational Association, writer Cindy Long believes the best replacement of this bygone practice is Performance-Based Assessment, in which students are evaluated based on aspects such as writing a paper, laboratory investigations, portfolios, etc. This method of assessment would be crafted to fit and illustrate the individual student’s capabilities and improvements, rather than taking a test that is “one-size-fits-all.” It would encourage students to utilize and grow their specific areas of academic prowess, while supporting educators to help their students through individualized lessons and personalized feedback.
Rosann Tung, the Director of Research and Policy at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, expresses hope for this new system of testing in a 2017 report for the Department of Education. “Whether performance assessments reduce opportunity gaps and lead to greater equity depends on how they are implemented and used in instruction.” She finds that while little supporting evidence exists to argue for the benefits of performance testing in contrast to its long-standing counterpart of standardized testing, she agrees that the former will allow for greater opportunity and engagement among students compared to the latter.
Tung adds that “we expect that students who have been underserved by our inequitable systems will do better with performance assessments than with standardized tests, both to inform instruction and to make decisions regarding promotion and graduation.”
While many unknowns exist regarding the efficiency of performance-based testing, it is evident that standardized testing is a poor reflection of students’ progress and their intelligence.
If the health and education of the next generation of Americans is to be prioritized, that must be corroborated by how they are tested. They deserve a system that acknowledges students’ differences, uplifts them and highlights their strengths and value, rather than through one that diminishes them via a one-size-fits-all, high-stakes test.
