Standardized Exams: The Plague of Education

Some seniors in Seattle run the danger of not graduating for not having satisfactory scores on a newly state mandated math test.

In my opinion, standardized tests are completely worthless and unnecessary. Just because a student is bad at math doesn't mean they should be excused from taking math courses or doing it- they should still be pushed to try and receive help when they need it, but all standardized tests do is push teachers to have their students learn a specific set of materials for them to pass a test and this, in my opinion, is not what learning is about.

Being smart isn't about knowing tons of scientific facts and laws, it's not about being able to solve elaborate equations, it't not about knowing tons of words. A proper high school education should give students the ability the knowledge at a basic level to operate in the world around them. But if this is done efficiently and correctly, there should be no need for state or federally mandated exams; The responsibility should lie within the schools and the teachers to determine if a student is proficient in a certain discipline. I see this all as a waste of time and money.

The fact that around 100 students may not graduate high school on time because they can't pass a math test, which consists of material that they most likely will never use in real life unless they enter a profession which requires them too and that they will forget shortly after leaving high school, is appalling to me. In high school, I took up to Pre-Calc/Trigonometry and my senior year a college-in-high school (CHS) statistics course. If you were to hand me any work or problems from my Pre-Calc/Trig class today, I guarantee I wouldn't be able to work them out. Same goes for CHS stats, although I do remember the important concepts and ideas about statistics that I apply quite a lot. That doesn't mean my education  and diploma is worthless or that I am not a intelligent member of society- it simply means that I do not care for much of math and I had no desire to really pursue it passed what I need to function well in society.