Many students are familiar with the photo above, a scantron fill in the bubble test form meant to grade a student on their answers to multiple choice problems. They’re popular with tests such as the SAT’s and AP Collegeboard exams, and provide almost instant feedback for test evaluators and instructors. At first glance these grading methods seem unproblematic and effective, but the more you dive into these systems of grading, the more it begins to resemble the failure of our educational system.

Standardized tests are large scale tests in the United States that determine a large portion of your future, and provide colleges and higher education with a snapshot of your intelligence. They test a few different subjects and attempt to place a number on your head relative to other students as a means of comparison. In some regards this can push a student to study and want to perform better on these exams, but from a different perspective they do little to actually educate students and instead memorize the answers for only a slice of the actual content.

The AP exams are great examples for this style of education, teachers are given a curriculum created by the state, and must teach students so that they can pass the exam at the end of the course. Rather than educating students about the subject, students are pushed more to understand just what the test will present rather than the whole subject field. This encourages cheating, and the teachers to cheat because performance is dictated so highly by how you perform on the test.

On top of this, with tests such as the SAT’s, various factors other than intelligence are present in your score. These can include whether your school had funding to provide a good education, whether your family has enough money to take the SAT, and fail to account for a wide range of intelligences. For instance, someone may not be a great writer, but score excellent in math. Regardless, their SAT score will drop significantly. This also applies to someone who may be a great artist, this isn’t even a section on the SAT.

I’m not saying standardized tests should be abolished, but I believe there needs to be some serious consideration about how these tests should be valued by college admissions, and employers. So many factors affect these scores that it’s difficult to just chalk up someone’s score based off their intelligence.