Standardized Testing Argumentative Essay

For a high school student, it can be said that the most stressful parts of their high school life are in their Junior and Senior years. This is due to many students having to maintain a suitable grade point average, as well as having to juggle college visits and applications, extra extracurricular activities, as well as any personal or social life they wish to have. On top of all of these responsibilities, students must also handle the stress that comes along with taking multiple state-mandated standardized tests. Through these standardized tests, students display what they have learned throughout their school careers. Although the multiple-choice format of these tests may have lead to many to begin to memorize facts and questions instead of thoroughly thinking through material, as said by The Center for Public Education, a national public school advocacy group: “in many cases multiple-choice tests now require considerable thought, even notes and calculations, before choosing a bubble” (Mitchell). As such, a test may be able

Upon gaining the results of these tests, government and education boards try to help further plan education in order to allow a student to learn better. However, standardized tests may lead a student to a grade-conscious mindset, and an effect of the standardization of testing is that many students are learning only to memorize material, rather than to think through and synthesize learned information. Therefore, standardized testing is not a reliable or credible way of evaluating students. Rather than getting rid of standardized testing, alternative solutions to standardized testing such as making it an option to send in standardized test scores when applying for school, which allows for a college to base a student on their extra-curricular activities or non-scholarly skills should be implemented