Scantron bubble sheets are not creative. Multiple choice tests are not effective means of student expression. And mostly… classrooms where prepping for a test has replaced critical discussion, thought, and higher level academic creativity are simply becoming entirely too rampant in our nation’s schools.

The worst part? This generation of students is trapped in a time period of a lack of expression at school. Every student can’t express his or her individual talents, because school has become a place where the most important question is who can get the highest score on a bubble sheet a few times a year.

Yes, the use of standardized tests has always been a part of the American education system; dating back to the early 1800s, but its use skyrocketed after 2002’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) mandated annual testing in all 50 states.  According to  Washington Post’s  “Shanghai Tops International Test Scores,” (Dec. 7, 2010), since then, US students slipped from 18th in the world in math test grades in 2000 to 31st place in 2009 and with a similar decline in science too.

So how has the extreme increase in testing even helped the American students?

It has almost done the opposite. Teachers and schools now exist in a world where “teach for the test” rules because that is how they get judged and evaluated. Evaluating teachers on students’ standardized test scores is at the heart of President Obama’s Race to the Top rant program (Patrick Welsh USA Today.) That has impacted how students learn because they are getting trained to just fill out bubble sheets. People are forgetting why we have school in the first place, which is just to simply learn and help educate students and better prepare them for their futures.

According to Patte Barth in, “A Guide to the No Child Left Behind Act,” on centerforpubliceducation.org, published Mar. 23, 2006, “These assessments can carry important consequences for students, teachers and schools: low scores can prevent a student from progressing to the next grade level or lead to teacher firings and school closures, while high scores ensure continued federal and local funding and are used to reward teachers and administrators with bonus payments.”

Standardized testing in the US has been estimated to be a multi-billion-dollar industry, basically the schools get higher funding and more money if students do well on the tests, but if a student fails or does poorly, then they have to possibly repeat the class and not move on to the next grade level. The nest year they will have to do the same curriculum just to take the test again, and hopefully do well; which then makes the school money. States give extra funding for the schools with higher test scores, so that’s why the schools place so much emphasis on them, but it can sometimes affect students.

Testing is also a major stressor for the takers, knowing that there is so much on the line and they only get one chance.

“Kids have become so focused on one test throughout the entire year that they kind of lose focus of all the great things that they’ve experienced throughout the year, all the great teaching that’s taken place with their teacher and they just become so stressed over this one day in their life and I think that’s unfortunate,” said Rebeccah Beller, interviewed by Rhema Thompson, who published an article on news.wjct.org about the stress impact that standardized tests causes. Mrs. Beller’s daughter Kate Wolfe came home hyperventilating about not understanding the test and filling out a bubble sheet wrong.

“We’ve seen increased anxiety over the past five to eight years,” she said. “I mean, it’s just incredible” Beller stated.

Even President Obama says “students are spending too much time in the classroom taking tests, many of them unnecessary” and urged officials in the country’s schools to take steps to administer fewer and more meaningful exams. (Christopher Doering, on October 25th 2015- USA Today)

Standardized testing has caused students to not be able to express individual talents at school, and has caused schools to ignore the importance of education, just to teach for the test and is a major stressor for the test-takers. Yet, we still continue to make this a cornerstone in our education despite these issues and little improvement in our education system.
Sources:

http://standardizedtests.procon.org/#background

http://news.wjct.org/post/too-much-test-stress-parents-experts-discuss-high-stakes-standardized-test-anxiety
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/10/24/obama-schools-test/74536886/