Is standardized testing obsolete?
Standardized testing has been used for many years to evaluate a person’s academic abilities. Most of us have taken standardized tests, whether that be a placement test, SAT, ACT, and many others, but how effective are standardized tests really? Although standardized tests can be effective in evaluating someone’s academic abilities, there are a lot of other factors that can affect someone’s performance that make them feel obsolete.
One reason why standardized tests can be obsolete is the amount of time they can take. Not including break time, the ACT takes around three hours to complete. The SAT takes three hours as well. Some people, even with short breaks during testing, will not be able to focus for that long. We all have sat through classes that we were bored in and know how hard it can be to stay focused. Now turn that boring class into a test you have to take and double the class time. That’s your standardized test. If you lose focus you’re in a very rough spot as well. Even losing five minutes on standardized tests can impact your score. This shows how standardized tests are obsolete because they take a long amount of time.
Another reason standardized testing is obsolete is that the tests are heavily based on memorization. We all have taken tests where we had to memorize many different things for the test, took the test and then forgot everything we had to memorize. It is frustrating having to memorize information that will not benefit you in the future. A lot of the things we would see on an ACT or SAT are not things we will use once we pursue higher education. Based on the career path you choose, a lot of information we have to memorize for these tests will not impact our careers. An engineer will not have to memorize the same things a history teacher would have to memorize. Due to this heavy basis of memorization, based on someone’s own interests, they will perform better in certain categories due to them enjoying learning those things. The engineer will probably do better than the history teacher in math because engineers are constantly using math in their work. But an engineer won’t do as well as a history teacher would in a history test as the history teacher will want to learn about history so they will have more knowledge. Standardized tests don’t take into account what we want to pursue in our future, they just test knowledge we had to memorize for school. If someone plans on going to college and studying engineering they should not have to test their abilities in chemistry. It just doesn’t make sense. This shows how standardized tests are obsolete because they are heavily based on memorization.
The final reason standardized tests are obsolete is because they fail to evaluate a person’s emotions. Many struggle to work under pressure. So giving them a test that is very important for their futures does put a lot of pressure on the test taker. If they struggle to perform under pressure their test will not reflect their full potential of knowledge in their academics. As well as not being able to perform under pressure some people are just not as good of test takers. Some people struggle with test-taking in general. We all learn in our own ways and these tests that make you feel the need to perform well might give someone a feeling of pressure and nervousness. Some people have the confidence to take these tests and do very well but others can just not perform under pressure and perform poorly. This shows how standardized tests are obsolete because they don’t evaluate someone’s emotions.
Overall, standardized tests have become obsolete. Standardized tests take too much time which makes them very hard to focus on, they are too based on memorization which can make them grueling to study for, and they can put a lot of pressure on someone to perform which can lower their test scores. Standardized tests can be used in the future to help a student show their knowledge but some changes could be made that could vastly improve standardized tests and make them more student-friendly.