Too much reliance on school testing

I've never attempted to hide my disdain for the American education system and its obsession with testing. Nowadays, tests comprise a disproportionately large amount of the education experience.

Despite their incredible prevalence in American education, standardized tests are a poor tool for measuring education on a number of levels, and America should attempt to lessen their emphasis of the tool.

As a student, I witness the shortcomings of standardized testing ridiculously often. While standardized tests may seem like the perfect tool for measuring student knowledge on paper, in practice, testing actually presents a myriad of flaws. Perhaps the most obvious of these flaws is that one's performance on a single test may not be reflective of their actual, practical knowledge. Like judging a poker player by the outcome of a single round, a student's performance on a test may be wildly different depending on the day and their luck.

In other words, the fatal flaw of testing is that it assumes that a student's long-term understanding of a concept and their ability to answer a random question connected to that concept is the same; while they should correlate, they aren't identical.

Now, I don't deny the efficacy of tests as a standard metric for measuring student knowldge. Particularly in the case of the ACT and SAT, I can accept the use of standardized testing, as it enables colleges to determine student aptitude without having to account for differences between high schools. However, on a number of levels, testing is a relatively inaccurate means of determining student knowledge.

The American education system needs to reduce its focus on testing and look to more accurate means of charting student growth. But, until then, I, like many other students, will be spending my nights studying for the many tests that lie ahead.

James McHargue

Glen Ellyn