What Went Wrong With Standardized Testing

As Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid” (Baskerville, 2013). This is very true when it comes to the school system and standardized testing. Ever since standardized testing has been implemented into the school systems, it has hindered students and teachers alike. For students, there are so many things wrong with standardized testing. One reason these tests are so terrible for students is the anxiety it gives them. “Some students simply do not test well. Many students are affected by test anxiety or do not show their learning well on a standardized test, resulting in inaccurately lower scores.” (“The Dangerous Consequences

Tests like the SAT fail to see the important characteristics like critical thinking ability and the test rewards superficial thinking while degrading analytical thinking (Harris, Harris, and Smith, 2012). There are actually many skills the SAT does not measure. Some of these attributes are creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, curiosity, persistence, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, course, honesty, and much more (Harris, Harris, and Smith, 2012). Tests of this caliber a lot of times reward a lot of shallow thinking. Students just take classes for standardized testing preparation. They get really good at the exact type of problems on the test and then are terrible at anything else. This is a real problem because not only can students take these preparation courses, but schools start to teach to the test. “The average teacher now reports spending about 30 percent of their work time on testing-related tasks…“(Walker, 2015) Schools ditch their regular material and start to move more and more toward the test itself, so what is not on the test is not taught. But, the test does not cover everything that students should be taught. Standardized tests “... have pushed into the nearly $700-million-a-year market… offering the SAT and ACT even to students who do not plan to go to college” (Zernike, 2016). This is important because it shows standardized testing is big business. Our student's education should not be based on business. The fact that these tests are being pushed so heavily on students is