Why We Should Not Use High Stakes Testing In Schools

Towards the end of school, students become hot, sweaty and want school to end. They are all ready to start their summer vacation. All of a sudden BAM! The government wants the schools to do a whole lot of testing for over four weeks. The government should not use high-stakes testing to assess student performance and to judge the performance of a school system when in fact high-stakes testing increases stress for staff and students, does not accurately measure a child's performance and ability, and narrows the curriculum.

A significant reason that high-stakes testing is not effective is because it increases the stress all over the school for staff to students. Staff have to prepare up to a week ahead of time to make sure they have enough pencils, paper, and other materials like 1,000 laptops that are programed and work properly. Other staff have to learn how to give the test, and make sure every student is able to log in to the test. Teachers need to cut out lesson plans for over three weeks to review everything we learned and other curriculum students need to know just for the test. Students get very stressed out about the test and try to study so much they don't even get enough sleep so they …show more content…
When students take tests, they get overwhelmed and frustrated to where they can't concentrate. Everything they learn goes in one ear and out the other. When a student gets like that, it can not accurately measure their performance because many students are actually smarter than the test makes them out to be, or a student may have guessed on the ones he didn’t know. When students are put in classes based on their scores, it leads to kids taking classes that are too easy or too hard for them. Above all, it is difficult for them to learn anything, so they usually fail the class. Student performance has nothing to do with the