literature

Short Essay - Standardized Tests

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Published: Dec 12, 2014

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Literature Text

Most material on standardized tests requires rote memorization of specific information. I believe that this type of information memorization can be beneficial in some aspects of learning, if it has to do with a skill you are interested in, such as memorizing the method of how to do something properly. But the way most of this stuff is being presented to students for standardized tests is way overkill. Most people can agree that part of a student’s education is that student being able to be a creative and independent individual who is ready to live in the real world. But standardized tests are not “real world”. They are like the artificial high fructose corn syrup fruit juice of public school. These beverages look like real fruit juice but if you read the ingredients, you will find that it’s just not so. Students who do well on standardized tests may appear to be learning well, but maybe we should take a closer look at the ingredients of what actually goes into preparing for these tests. To my understanding, teachers give students the questions that will be on the test, and students memorize the “correct” way to answer them. I remember preparing for one of these tests in eighth grade. At one point we stopped everything that we had been learning about, and our teacher announced that we would now being moving into the “MAP test unit”. From this point on, everything we did in class would focus on the MAP test. What we did from that day on until the test was practice answering questions that had been on past MAP tests, and memorizing those answers. I remember one of the questions that our teacher gave us actually ended up being on the test, and I was able to answer it. People can judge for themselves whether that means that I learned something or not. People will have different opinions I’m sure. I guess I could say that I “learned” from it. It was about a political cartoon, and what it “meant”. And I was able to write down the meaning that my teacher had told me. However, before my teacher explained the cartoon to me, I was unsure about what it was trying to say. I was never able to draw my own conclusion about it. I can see how this could be a problem. Students need to learn to be independent thinkers and draw their own conclusions. Not just have information spoon fed to them, and then be able to spit it back at a test.