Students get stressed every year

            Students get stressed every year because they have to study hard for an exam to ensure their future, whether you decide which college or university you'll go to. A simple, standardized test will evaluate you based on your test score and give you options where you can go. Standardized tests are a way to assess students' knowledge around the world consistently—many standardized tests, including the SAT, ACT, AP, IB tests, and TOEFL. Schools should abolish standardized testing because they create undue stress on students, judge all students' academic abilities, and lack the best evidence of a student's intelligence or knowledge of the material in a particular subject.

            Standardized testing creates lots of undue stress on students. For example, back in my junior year of high school, which was one of the roughest years of high school for me, I had to take the SAT, and my mom was pressuring me every single day, saying that I needed to study a lot and to get a good score on the test because it will decide my future. I was so stressed out studying very hard for the SAT and listening to my mom screaming at me all the time until I took the test, so the amount of stress you'll get is unhealthy.`Getting pressured all the time creates lots of stress and disturbs your mental health, making you do things wrong. Research from AERA Open found that "Student performance on a standardized test is also affected by differences in stress/arousal during testing, or what we call a test-day stress deficit and can create a divergence between what students know and how much they are judged to know by a given standardized test.", Even if students know the material of the test, the simple fact that they are stressed out is going to affect their performance and make them do poorly on the test. Another research from AERA Open shows that "Differences in stress exposure and stress response may explain why two students with the same level of knowledge may have different results on the same standardized tests or why one student does not accumulate the same level of material; in the first place." Stress may affect some students more than others. Students who have the same knowledge and are equally brilliant will be affected by their pressure and stress while taking the standardized test, affecting their scores at the end, getting worse scores than people who are less intelligent than them. In general, Standardized testing is a waste of time for students and the teachers because they can't measure a student's knowledge while they are stressed out because they can't perform well in that state.

             Standardized tests judge the academic ability of students. The article "The WA-HI Journal" says that "students will always be different kinds of thinkers and therefore will naturally express themselves differently. For example, a student might be a gifted public speaker but struggle with putting their thoughts on paper. Even though the student might know the material, they wouldn't be able to demonstrate their skills and would be penalized for their natural weaknesses". The school can't judge students and measure their intelligence based on their scores on a standardized test. Intelligence should be proven by how a person can solve real-world problems using the skills they have. Research from The WA-HI Journal also states that "Standardized testing sends the degrading message to students that the wide expanse of human knowledge, learning, and intelligence can be measured and condensed into three mind-numbing hours of applying memorized formulas, searching for subjective answers to reading comprehension questions, and defining words they'll never use in real life." Standardized tests can't judge the student's academic ability by the score they get because they are being measured in a way they are not comfortable with. Some students have better capabilities at taking tests than others, while others are bad but have excellent performance in school. Schools should judge their students based on their grades, not on a single standardized test, because when you have good grades, it means that the student worked and finished many assignments and got good scores.

              Lack the best evidence of a student's intelligence or knowledge of the material in a particular subject.  According to an article from the Adams Kilt, they claim that "These tests do not measure a student's intelligence, but rather their ability to sit and take a test. It also states that standardized tests place the basis of a student's entire future on one three-to-four hour test". A 3-4 hour test can't determine a student's intelligence or performance in a subject based on their score. These tests need a test-taking strategy that only people who are good at taking tests know; they don't measure their knowledge on a specific subject. An article from the Graphic says that "Standardized tests don't measure intelligence. What they measure is how well a student can sit and take a test. They measure how well students can learn the tricks to beat the system". Some students can be dumb and not know the material, but still know how to take the test and learn its tricks, so the scores are useless and incorrect. So if schools can't determine what the students need to improve based on the standardized tests that the district makes schools give and students to take, they might as well get rid of them forever because they are useless, and teachers can't judge students based on the score they get.

              Students, schools, and curriculums can benefit from standardized tests because they can help identify students' problems in certain subjects and help them learn all of the material they need. They also provide teachers a structure of what needs to be taught. Standardized tests help keep classroom material consistent across the country, but at the end of the day all of this is pointless because at the same time, these tests stress out and pressure the students, and this action makes them do poorly and unable to learn the material. For example, some students are brilliant and have excellent grades on a specific subject, but when it comes to the test, they get a poor score because they get so stressed out and the pressure makes them unable to focus or learn new material.  Schools should also remove standardized tests because they create undue stress on students, judge all students' academic abilities, and lack the best evidence of a student's intelligence or knowledge of the material in a particular subject.

               Each time I had to take a standardized test, I had to study a lot and memorize many things to get a decent grade because I'm not very good at taking tests because stress and anxiety distract me and make me forget the material. So at the end of the day, standardized testing is pointless because they don't measure the student's ability, intelligence, and memorization of the material. They measure how the students handle peer pressure during a test, and only the people who know the tricks of taking the test will get a good score, which is unfair for all other students who try their best studying and are more brilliant than others. This is why s  should abolish standardized testing because they create undue stress on students and judge all students' academic abilities. They lack the best evidence of a students' knowledge and level of performance in a specific subject area. Schools and districts should stop making them and forcing people to take standardized tests because they do more harm than good to the students and schools. Communities and Schools should unite people to abolish standardized testing and reform their system once and for all.