As my freshman year of college continues to move along faster than I can process it, I think back to high school and what I would be doing now. I’d be finishing up basketball and looking forward to track, I would be helping student council plan the spring dance, and I would be getting ready to take the Keystones. For those of you reading this who are not from PA and don’t know what the Keystones are a standardized test that access high school students ability in reading math and science. It is required by the state of Pennsylvania that all students receive a proficient or higher in order to graduate high school. Schools were given monetary compensation for the percentage of advanced scores on the test. It is for this reason I had to take the math Keystone 3 times in one year. The first time I was one point away from proficient. The second time I got proficient, but was told that I needed to take it again despite passing. So in one day I took both the science and math Keystone, and received a below basic on the math. I was told to take it a fourth time but luckily for me I was not the only kid told to take the test again despite having passed. The school was told to stop this but it did not make up for the stress that my classmates and I felt for four straight years of high school. I was fortunate and was able to pass all the tests but many of my friends had to take remedial classes in order to graduate. Many of these friends were AP honors students. Standardized testing is not just a Western PA problem, it is a national problem.
It all starts in 1999 when tests results for a global standardized test were released. To this point America was under the impression that our education system was number one. They were in for a rude awakening when out of the 40 countries tested, the U.S. ranked 28th. Shortly after President Bush implemented the “No Child Left Behind” policy in 2001. This was in an effort to improve the lowering standardized test scores. It implemented the incentive that if children showed improvement throughout the year on standardized tests the teacher was given a raise. On the surface this seems like a good idea but it was only problematic. An example of this happened in Florida. One teacher had a student projected to score higher than the test’s max score. When the test came the student scored perfectly, but because her projection was higher than that allowed the teacher received a negative rating in his evaluation despite having a student score 100%. One of the reasons this happened is because the algorithm used by the state of Florida is the same that is used when mass breeding cattle. What does that say about our United States educational system when the algorithm to make sure cattle production is tip-top is used to evaluate a students intelligence. Another problem with it is it forces teachers to take time away from teaching valuable life skills to teach test taking skills. I’m probably not the only one who had to sit through a lecture and have the teacher say at the end this really dose not matter for this course but it is on the test so I have to teach it. That is ridiculous! Wasting valuable class time to teach some information just because it is on a test.
“No Child left Behind” also increased the number of standardized tests taken by a student from 6 to 17. It is my opinion that the way to evaluate intelligence is not by bombarding students with useless questions that often don’t make sense. I get the policy was implemented to help bridge the gap between schools that face racial and economic inequalities. I agree that any attempt is nice to help that divide, but treating students like cattle is the wrong way to do it. I am fortunate now to not have to take anymore standardized tests but if our government continues to promote teaching tests rather than material then I have some serious concerns for America moving forward.