2008 Woodie Awards
Leave Standardized Testing to High Schools, Please
Megan Borkes
Issue date: 10/16/06 Section: Opinions
- Page 1 of 1
For those of us who lived in Florida for high school, we all know the dread that comes with the approaching FCAT season. FCAT, the standardized testing system in Florida, comes around just about every other year, and students are required to pass before they can move on to the next grade.
In high school, a passing FCAT is required to graduate. Seniors in high school suffer through long class periods of FCAT review because some of the people in the class are still preparing for their "last" year of testing. This system causes many classes to be cramped for time when it comes to the end of the year and they still have about five chapters left to cover. FCAT takes priority over that, and the testing day turns out to be pretty much a skip day for the rest of the students not taking the test.
The point I'm trying to make here is that we students have had more than enough of standardized testing through high school. Even a non-Floridian can agree that the SATs and ACTs are enough to have to worry about. So, why would there even be a possibility that college students will have to go through the standardized testing ordeal all over again in order to graduate with a degree? An article in the New York Times says that might be a very distinct possibility in the next few years.
I guess I could see where they're coming from. Many students who graduate from college have less than stellar educations. Though they may have been book smart, the fact that they still mix up the different forms of "there" (that's "there," "their," and "they're," by the by) is a bit terrifying. So, maybe standardized testing is a good idea.
But then again, shouldn't students have gotten past that kind of error in high school? Shouldn't we already know how to construct a coherent sentence and how to do preliminary algebra? Yes. Yes we should. That's what the SATs and ACTs in high school are for.
It's ridiculous to think that college students are going to be demoted to the level of high school students when it comes to testing. College is supposed to be a higher level of learning, and to me, that sort of testing has a very elementary connotation. I mean, it should. Students - at least students here in Florida - have been testing that way since they were in elementary school, after all. Hitting college was supposed to be a turning point in a student's life. But if standardized testing is brought up to this level, it's going to be a lot more of the same experiences.
And what happens when a student's schedule doesn't match up with when the testing is supposed to take place? Is there going to be a required class that teaches just the things that will be tested on? Wouldn't that make it a little bit more stressful for those seniors who are trying to focus on their major of choice? It's just a bad, flawed idea all around. Any way you look at it, standardized testing should be left in high school where it belongs.
In high school, a passing FCAT is required to graduate. Seniors in high school suffer through long class periods of FCAT review because some of the people in the class are still preparing for their "last" year of testing. This system causes many classes to be cramped for time when it comes to the end of the year and they still have about five chapters left to cover. FCAT takes priority over that, and the testing day turns out to be pretty much a skip day for the rest of the students not taking the test.
The point I'm trying to make here is that we students have had more than enough of standardized testing through high school. Even a non-Floridian can agree that the SATs and ACTs are enough to have to worry about. So, why would there even be a possibility that college students will have to go through the standardized testing ordeal all over again in order to graduate with a degree? An article in the New York Times says that might be a very distinct possibility in the next few years.
I guess I could see where they're coming from. Many students who graduate from college have less than stellar educations. Though they may have been book smart, the fact that they still mix up the different forms of "there" (that's "there," "their," and "they're," by the by) is a bit terrifying. So, maybe standardized testing is a good idea.
But then again, shouldn't students have gotten past that kind of error in high school? Shouldn't we already know how to construct a coherent sentence and how to do preliminary algebra? Yes. Yes we should. That's what the SATs and ACTs in high school are for.
It's ridiculous to think that college students are going to be demoted to the level of high school students when it comes to testing. College is supposed to be a higher level of learning, and to me, that sort of testing has a very elementary connotation. I mean, it should. Students - at least students here in Florida - have been testing that way since they were in elementary school, after all. Hitting college was supposed to be a turning point in a student's life. But if standardized testing is brought up to this level, it's going to be a lot more of the same experiences.
And what happens when a student's schedule doesn't match up with when the testing is supposed to take place? Is there going to be a required class that teaches just the things that will be tested on? Wouldn't that make it a little bit more stressful for those seniors who are trying to focus on their major of choice? It's just a bad, flawed idea all around. Any way you look at it, standardized testing should be left in high school where it belongs.
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