Most United States students have been subjected to standardized testing, and it has been that way since the mid 1800s. In 2002, however, certain educators and parents began to open their eyes to the negative effects of these types of exams when the No Child Left Behind Act was passed. This legislation made it mandatory for all states to participate in moderated standardized testing (Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America?, NA). I consider myself a student who shows their intelligence through my thoughts and words. I love debating, writing stories and screenplays, or simply sitting down and talking about the knowledge I've acquired in school. Some of my friends are brilliant test-takers, while others can show what they've learned through song and dance. Humans learn in a variety of different ways, so it makes sense that they should be able to prove what they’ve learned in a variety of different ways as well. How can people enforcing these types of exams believe that a four hour, timed, bland test can determine a student or school’s validity? To me, standardized testing seems like a highly inefficient way to test a student’s intelligence and individuality. Students, parents, educators, and admissions councils at colleges would benefit from the elimination of mandatory testing in schools.

Proponents of standardized tests claim that they are non-discriminatory. They contend that every individual is getting the exact same exam and has a fair chance of success. This contradicts the argument that every person doesn’t learn the same way. Another reason why some educators like standardized testing is because rather than narrowing a curriculum, it focuses on the important things in a curriculum. While these arguments are valid, they are not as convincing as the endless points that contradict them. If actions are taken to stop standardized testing, education in the United States will improve because it will emphasize the importance of learning, not the memorization of facts and being conditioned to promptly answer questions in a terrifyingly conventional way.

When a student takes the SAT, he/she is given a limited amount of time to answer math, vocabulary, and English literature questions. These tests can only be taken a few times, and in some cases, can be deciding factors on whether or not students are accepted into their desired colleges. These tests have been known to give students anxiety, stress, and tension. The fact is that some students show their intelligence in other ways. Why should the ability of knowing inverse functions be more important than seeing how someone is going to impact the world? Why does our society place more value on a student’s ability to determine the “implied messages in short stories” rather than the compassion they show for the people and the world around them? Educators should be placing value on creativity, critical thinking, and leadership. instead of the narrow field of things standardized tests measure. Children and adolescents have an incredible amount of knowledge and character to showcase to others. Standardized testing places these different individuals into one big category, where their worth is seen as a score and their academic ability is arbitrarily measured against the others in their group.

Students tend to be anxious and tense in the 21st-century education arena, especially with all the competition and stress that is associated with graduating successfully, going to college, and finding a job. It is understandable how a student could be stressed from a timed exam where the strategies on how to take the test are more important to learn than studying for what is going to be on the actual test. The Sacramento Bee, a newspaper in California, stated that “test-related jitters, especially among young students, are so common that the Stanford-9 exam comes with instructions on what to do with a test booklet in case a student vomits on it" (Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America?, NA). This unsettling fact proves that some students are becoming sick over exams such as these. Many people who have been required to take one of these exams before (as most in our country have) can probably relate to the anxiety.

Students are not the only group that standardized testing places stress upon. A large percentage of teachers have considered leaving their jobs because of the amount of time they have to put into preparing for the tests, rather than teaching valuable information. On top of that, the government looks at the scores from these tests to determine a teacher’s worth in many cases as well, which is an unfair way to access a teacher’s ability. The answer is to not assign so much importance to these tests.

Standardized testing does not improve a student’s achievement or accomplish much compared to its negative effects, and has actually made our education system regress rather than progress. The United States ranked 18th in the world for math in the year 2000, before No Child Left Behind was passed. In 2009, The United States ranked 31st. Our science ranking has also dropped throughout the decade, and overall reading scores have seen no fluctuation (Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America?, NA). Standardized testing is a leading cause of why our education system has progressively gotten worse; we are focusing on the wrong ideals when it comes to teaching our next generation of Americans.

The one-billion dollar investment our country has given to education is going to the wrong parts of the system. We need to begin celebrating students’ individuality rather than their ability to solve insignificant problems hastily. We need to place a greater importance on asking the “whys” and not just the “hows.” If education is mandated at the federal level, we will be teaching to the masses rather than the individuals themselves. If education can progress in a way where learning is an exciting experience rather than a standardized routine, passion and exuberance will be shown by teachers and students alike. Then invested teachers can once again teach motivated students who have a desire to learn. This can only occur if these standardized tests, which induce stress and anxiety and benefit only a small number of students, are no longer used for assessment.