APA final draft

 How has standardized tests effected my education?

The sound of my alarm on early Saturday morning automatically puts me into a bad mood. I have that horrible feeling of knowing that in a short time I will be spending the next 3 hours sitting in a small room filled with people that I don’t know. This is the perfect way I wanted to spend my Saturday morning, sitting next to an innocent girl who probably crammed for weeks, and on the other side I have a kid who most likely doesn’t even know why he is here. I hated having to sit down in this small room with plain white walls, not even a single picture around me to even brighten up the fact that I have to sit there for hours. Everything seems to be going fine you hear an occasional sound of someone’s stomach growling, until suddenly that question and room I was in all turned dark. The stress and small quickly got to me, before I knew it was lying on the ground. I had simply passed out and fell out of my chair onto the ground. Lesson learned when you have a concussion from soccer the stress of an ACT probably isn’t a good idea. So I may not have been the goodie goodie or the weird kid, but now I was going to be the one kid who couldn’t handle the pressure and passed out.

Growing up plan tests where just something that would be given every year for an entire day, never did any of the students think that it was something of importance. A piece of paper was given and you were to just simply color in a bubble. These tests were simply given to tell how smart we were. While studying to be a teacher, it was starting to become clearer to me as if a test was a good way to tell how smart my students were.

It was easy to just want to make a picture or something of that sort because to us it didn’t matter. We may have been able to color in those bubbles and pictures when we were younger but as each year went on the test became more of an importance. Those simple little bubbles were about to determine our futures. The schools we were going to and the places we would be at. It was no longer a little game, we had to take it seriously, and we were basing our futures on one test.

Standardized testing is big business. Every year Americans spend millions on the tests they are required to write in order to be evaluated for admission into undergraduate and graduate programs, and many millions more are spent on coaching schools in an attempt to raise scores. The testing companies, especially ETS, play a major role as gatekeepers to American higher education. (Chris Carter)

The first big plan test I took was going to decide if I was talented enough to get into a prep school, and more so decide what classes I would be in. Was it really far that a simple test was going to decide what I did? “The SSAT and the ISEE are the two most commonly used standardized admissions tests used in American private schools”.( Robert  Kennedy) To me it didn’t seem so fair, how could this one little piece of paper tell a school of teachers how smart I was or wasn’t? Weren’t my teachers keeping track of my grades for a reason, or was that just something they did for fun. I worked hard for those grades because I thought that they mattered. If they were that important, than why was a simple test determining my future?

As years went on and more test were given I slowly started to understand, that was until it came time for the most popular tests the SAT and ACT. Standardized testing is big business. Every year Americans spend millions on the tests they are required to write in order to be evaluated for admission into undergraduate and graduate programs, and many millions more are spent on coaching schools in an attempt to raise scores. The testing companies, especially ETS, play a major role as gatekeepers to American higher education. (Chris Carter)

“The observation has been made that boys surpass girls on standardized tests. But the ACT gender gap has narrowed.”( Michelle Slatalla) Boys from the class of 2007 scored 21.2 on averages, with girls just behind at 21. So now I am being told that my gender has something to do with my testing.

These two tests were really going to determine the types of places that I would be able to get into. Most commonly depending on if you were going to the west or east would tell you what test you would need to take. Going to the west most of the colleges would expect you to take the ACT were as going to the east you would take the SAT. Why did there seem to be a difference as of what test needed to be taken depending on what coast you were in. In the last five years, the number of ACT takers on the East Coast has risen 66 percent, and on the West Coast 46 percent, according to ACT Inc. (Michelle Slatalla)

  Colleges looked at each test as if that was the most important thing, was a 3 hour test really going to be able to determine the colleges I got into? What was the point of four years of schooling if in the end it would come down to a test to describe how smart I was?

Although testing may be stressful for some students, testing is a normal and expected way of assessing what students have learned. The purpose of state assessments required under No Child Left Behind is to provide an independent insight into each child's progress, as well as each school's. This information is essential for parents, schools, districts and states in their efforts to ensure that no child--regardless of race, ethnic group, gender or family income--is trapped in a consistently low-performing school. (ED.Gov)

Teachers work towards helping students understand the information and that is why they give tests in a class room. Their main focus is to make sure that what is being taught in the class room is being understood before sending them on the next grade or so.  A plan test on the other terms doesn’t really matter if you understand the information at all it is more based on just the score. You are supposed to take all the information that you have learned in your classes and then apply that to one test.

When taking a test in high school if you were unsure with the information or didn’t understand it you were able to go back to the teacher and they would help you to figure the rest out. After taking the standardized tests there is no way of figuring out what you need to work on exactly. It may tell you that your math was high or that science was low, but that won’t help you to understand the importance of what you missed. That doesn’t seem very fair to anyone involved with it. When I become a teacher I want to be able to look at my students and know that what they have learned will help them succeed in the academic journey. My way of looking at is you can’t sit down a student and expect that a three hour test will be able to decide either if they are going to one college or another. 12 years of schooling and those grades should speak mainly for themselves.