The New York Times reported College Board, the organization in charge of a lot standardized testing for higher education, is revamping the SAT.
The biggest changes made are the essay will now be optional.
We’re a little iffy about this. Should standardized testing be reviewed here in the United States? Absolutely. Should there even be standardized testing at all? Well, probably not.
In 2012, the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings found states now spend as much as $1.7 billion on standardized tests. In a 2014 harvardpolitics.com interview, fifth grade teacher Dawn Neely-Randall said her students now take what amounts to eight hours of tests in a single week and students have started to have break-downs.
Neely-Randall said the standardized tests used to determine what middle school classes students will be sent to takes time away from actual, valuable learning, such as class projects, interactive activities, etc.
The problem the Editorial Board sees with most standardized testing is it doesn’t really relate at all to what we learn in school.
As much as College Board touts its testing’s relevancy in higher education, it doesn’t even relate to what we learn in college.
Education, across the board, is changing. Students no longer need manual skills that require they get a guild-like education. Students need a holistic approach to education early so they aren’t floored by the amount of work needed at the college level.
Something needs to be done about the humanities. Removing the essay from the SAT would be disastrous. In an editorial essay, slate.com reported students are more likely to “buy, borrow or steal” their essays in college than they are to actually write them.
We recognize that standardized tests have their place in the education system. They are valuable in early education, when teachers and schools need to figure out what a student’s strengths and weaknesses are.
However, standardized testing at the high school level takes valuable time out of class for teachers to teach students information they will only use and see once and never use or see again.
This isn’t a call to end the SAT or ACT immediately, but we do want it to be more thoroughly reviewed and its place in our educational system to be judged more harshly. Students shouldn’t experience mental breakdowns from standardized tests.
If anything, it could at least relate, even a little, to things we’ve actually learned.
