Standarized Testing

Madyson Reid, Staff Reporter

High school students across America will take the SAT come this May. For a long time, these tests have been required by students due to the assumption that they represent their intelligence. The same question arises when we take these mandated tests. Is this truly a representation of a student’s knowledge?

While some refuse to believe it, the answer to the question is, in my opinion, no. What these scores really represent is the amount of money a family makes. If a family can afford the best tutors and helpers for the test, then their score will reflect that. However, students whose families don’t make enough to support these tutors don’t have the same opportunities. Some say that schools should pay for tutors for students without access, but schools don’t receive enough funding for this which is the problem.

Not only do these tests give unfair advantages to those who can afford tutors, but also due to the one size fits all approach of standardized testing, the tests cannot consider all the variables which contribute to the scores. In America, you are not allowed to take the SAT in anything but English. This leads to people whose first language is not English getting lower scores than those whose first language it is. However, the tests don’t show every aspect of the student.

Standardized testing is not a true representation of the potential of students. The test does not consider all the variables that play into each student’s score along with it giving a disadvantage to students who cannot afford tutors for the test. All it does is consider how much information a student could cram just for them to forget it all later. Therefore, I feel this test shouldn’t play such a role in the future of a student.