The teacher starts the timer and cramps begin in your stomach. Sweat drips off your forehead and onto your desk. Your mind goes completely blank as you open the packet and see symbols and terms that you have never even heard of. This is what standardized testing is like to every kid. It is also one of the many reasons why standardized testing is counterproductive to the education process.

In addition to stress standardized testing is a very inaccurate way of measuring a student’s knowledge.  Mr. Route, an educator at Linwood Middle school said in an interview that “I saw some kids who had low test scores that turned out to be A or B students” In spite of the Inaccuracies, American children are still the most tested in the world, taking more than 1,000,000 standardized tests each year, according to teachers college at Columbia University in New York City.

“ It takes a lot of time to prepare which could be used for more important things,” said Kush Singh, an honors student at Linwood Middle school when asked about standardized testing. He’s right too. The two or 3 months used to study for a standardized test could be used to advance a student’s knowledge in different subjects. If we didn’t do 2 months of studying for a test, we could learn 24 extra months of material over a 12 year school career.

But of course the main argument against standardized testing is stress. “ It puts a lot of Stress on almost every student because your teachers make it seem like such a big deal” says Adil Kazmi, a student at Linwood Middle school. Mr. Route a teacher at Linwood Middle school seems to agree with him. “…. I think that standardized testing puts a tremendous amount of students knowing that you will be recognized by your number and some teachers will only recognize you by your number.”

In conclusion, standardized testing has failed to meet our expectations and should be discontinued. You need to start a petition, send an e-mail, or at least talk to one of your school board members. If we do continue standardized testing will need to alter it severely by making it shorter, spread out throughout the year, and less consequential for colleges and placement. So remember, eliminating standardized testing would be the first step to putting our country back on top of the world in education.