This Generation is 'Most Tested, Least Educated,' Morris County Student Says

Dear Editor:

As New Jersey makes the change in standardized testing from NJASK to PARCC, and as the number of preparatory assessments increase, I can’t help but realize that this is a step closer to the black hole of standardized testing. In the five years I’ve been taking standardized tests, the only thing I’ve learned about them - other than the fact that they come in long passages, multiple choice questions, lots of lines, blank spaces, word problems, and scantrons - is that, surprisingly, they contradict the purpose of a school and work against teachers’ jobs.

Taking a step back to look at what is basically my second home, I’ve come to the conclusion that a school should be a place where children and teens learn and develop social, academic, and basic life skills, and in addition be a place where teens begin to discover and build their identities. First, core subjects such as math, reading and writing, language, arts, etc, ensure that students will be knowledgeable enough when they are let out into society. Next, to aid in building identity, schools provide experiences for students that aren’t normally easily accessible. Art, music, and foreign language classes do a great job of allowing students to see and enter a world other than the basic academics. Thus, it can be seen that schools are indeed making an effort to help students along on their paths of leaving school and self-discovery. Basically, schools should be places of teaching and the beginning of introspection for the youth.

However, standardized tests, and the preparatory tests that come before them, are slowly but surely changing the purpose of a school for the worse. Standardized tests are gradually changing schools into jails for robots, just so the robots can do well on a test. Instead of being allowed the privilege of dipping our toes in the shallow end of the pool first, then wading out into the middle and finally the deep end, students are forced to learn quickly, rather than to learn at their own pace, retain information, and develop skills to learn on our own. We aren’t given the luxury of getting comfortable and pulling all the pieces together, then moving on to another topic. Given the opportunity to do so would only secure the building blocks, foundation, and understanding of a topic for a student, allowing the student to easily and readily move on. Standardized tests pretty much throw students into the deep end of the pool, ready or not, and give us two choices: learn to swim, or drown. Meanwhile, the assessments that come before the “big test” are thrown at students constantly. One week, students have to memorize this information. Another week, students have to memorize that information, and more information. In such a short time, with so much testing, is a student really going to retain all the things he “learned”? And are we being taught to understand and think, or are we being taught to memorize facts, but be unable to apply what we learned to anything? Basically, from within the system, standardized tests, and the preparatory testing that goes with it, are taking on the roll of shoving a subject down a student’s throat and forcing one to swallow the information, when he or she should be learning the basics to be well educated enough, and learning to be willing to reach out for more instead of being pressed down by tests.

Next, standardized testing works against the purpose of teaching. A teacher’s job is to teach about their respective subjects, and at the same time, teach students to love and use what is being taught. A teacher is supposed to open the door for the student, but the student himself or herself must be willing to walk through the door. Willingness to walk through the door comes with accepting and loving what is being taught. This would require being able to understand and apply material taught in class. It is widely known that students don’t like testing, so in every way, excessive testing works against that aspect of a teacher’s job. However, standardized testing also forces teachers to tie up students and drag them through the door, in order not to fail. At any given opportunity, students are going to try to run out that door and away from standardized testing. Clearly, it’s a no-brainer that standardized testing and excessive testing contradict what a teacher’s job should be, and doesn’t fit into the teaching and learning system without putting it at risk.

As for the contentious PARCC exam, short for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, more are opposed to it than in support of it. In fact, to date, only ten states and DC are still having students take the PARCC. After taking practice exams, similar to a Montclair parent mentioned in an article on nj.com (PARCC exams blasted by parents, teachers, students, at openforum), I’ve encountered the same problems as her: I struggled to select the “best” answer, and I had difficulty with the computer. Some of the questions were horribly designed, and there was a passage that was especially ambiguous and unclear. Most importantly, I clicked the red “x” on the window questioning myself and feeling inadequate. This is coming from a student who doesn’t struggle in school. Not only this, but PARCC doesn’t seem to be assessing the right things to measure our “readiness for college and careers.” With PARCC taking so much time away from class, when we’re supposed to be learning to be creative, insightful, and to be ourselves, it seems that PARCC is only leading schools down a different path, which was blocked for a reason. Due to politicians’ decision to open up that path, the purpose of schools and teachers has been demolished, and students and perhaps even teachers are fighting to reblock that dangerous path. Education Commissioner David Hespe says that PARCC exams hold value - I would beg to differ, and seemingly, being within in system where the toxic PARCC exam has been injected, we - students and teachers - are the ones who suffer.

By the time our generation gets out of school, we’ll be the most tested but least educated, least motivated, and least inspired generation ever to come out of a school as a whole. School will be the place we should have been educated and picked up valuable life lessons, instead of being confronted with obstacle after obstacle, which now happen to be “valuable exams” and computer screens telling us how smart we are. We will have no love for anything taught in school, and our motivation to do anything will have been pressed into nothing by tests. All because of assessments which will hold no value in a couple decades, our generation will have no education at all as a whole. Albert Einstein once said, “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” If what he says is true, then our generation will really have no education whatsoever, despite being tested and “taught” so much in school and assessed in so many different ways. Few will be able to see through the thick fog of standardized testing, determining how “smart” students are, to see who they really are as a person. Truly, standardized testing is becoming a bigger and bigger threat to schools and teachers. My biggest question though, one that is brought up often when speaking of the negative aspects of standardized testing, is, if we’re all individuals, why are we tested by the same means?

Sincerely,
Amber Huang
Brooklawn Middle School Student
Parsippany, New Jersey