Standardized Test Standardize the Mind
A person may have a good work ethic, determination, and creativity but if he or she does not have the required score on a standardized test that a college sets, then the person can be overlooked without ever noticing the potential of that person.
Too often students must look for other colleges because they cannot get the score needed to be accepted into the college they want. Standardized test is given to compare a certain skill set of a student’s intellectual capability to another’s on a national scale. Children grow up in a world that tells them to focus and study for materials on the standardized test to get into a good college which will give them a good career, but that is not the case. Creativity, communication skills, and diverse thinking are necessary to get a good job and be successful. Standardized testing should not determine whether a person can be accepted into a college or determine their future in education because the test cannot determine how hard of a worker a person is and it can lead to self-esteem issues in students. Standardized testing like the American College Testing program (ACT) and the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) ask questions that can only show what a student knows with things like facts or how well they can comprehend a passage after a quick skim of a passage.
There is no aspect of these standardized testing that is meant to show diversity or innovative thinking; instead, there are questions that have one right answer. The test is not graded on how the person gets the answer, rather that they got it somehow. In other words, the test is limited to make an assumption on the final product; not a person’s work ethic or ability to actually understand the material, but if they got the right answer. Standardized tests force students to think nearly identically to each other which can reduce creativity which can impede the person’s future career, the opposite of what the creators of standardized tests want. In today’s world creativity is needed in order to stand out and appeal to businesses who are looking to hire workers. Students from different schools and different backgrounds all over the United States take these tests to determine their choices for college but are limited due to inadequate scores that, for some reason, they cannot improve enough to make a difference.
To most students, sitting in a chair for more than two hours taking a timed test to help determine their future is intimidating to them and can lead to stress and anxiety. These people already deal with homework, in-school tests, and projects so adding to their workload can be overbearing. Whether it is stress, insufficient knowledge of the material, or an incapability to focus for such a long period of time, some students are just not good at standardized testing. Because of this, it can restain student from reaching their full potential both academically and creatively. Standardized tests are able to compare certain intellectual capabilities of students on a big scale more easily, but the scores can put false labels on them such as “smart”, “average”, or “ignorant” which can affect a person’s self-esteem.
The test’s score only determines how well a student knew the material on the test that the creators thought they should know, not their overall mentality. The tests push people to think that there is only one way to way to view our intelligence: what numbers on a piece of paper say. It does not account for how a student performs in school or what kind of person they are. Innovative thinking cannot be scored on the standardized tests, nor can it help while taking the tests. On these tests, there is only one answer for each problem that can have a positive outcome, but in the real world, different answers to one problem can make the person stand out and appeal to others.
Making standardized testing voluntary for college acceptance could be a possible solution because the test can still benefit those who are good at testing, but for those who are not, it does not decrease their chances. The college would focus more heavily on the student’s performance in school to determine whether they want the person to attend their school. If a student shows certain potential to be useful or as a good representative to the school, that should be why they are excepted. Determining the possible future of a student should not be based on how well he or she did on a roughly three-hour test because of its focuses too much on certain skills that tend to not have useful purposes.
