This is going somwhere...I think

Or not we'll just have wait and see.

Random Disclaimer Thingie
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These are opinions, not to be taken as fact. What is said here may or may not be true. We are not to be blamed for anything that comes of this, but we will accept praise or gratitude. That is all, thank you. ^_^
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Warning: I may reiterate myself in this. I also may get things wrong as well. You have probably also already heard much of this stuff as well or think it.

Standardized testing, a phrase that makes many students cringe. It is gruesome, it is brain melting, it takes up time that could be used progressing in other classes, overall it doesn't seem to do much. For example my Precalc teacher had stuff planned for those days, at least one day was a test, and because of the testing, eventhough my class is out of testing by D block, we can't really move forward until after testing, because of the fact that our brains will be tired and he doesn't want the two Precalc classes out of sync.
I bring up this topic today because well my grade, 11, will be taking the science necap's tomorrow and Thursday. The necap's are standardized tests done because of the no child left behind act to judge our school and all that stuff. My grade has already taken the math and reading/writing ones as of earlier this school year. It was very tiresome, even if it wasn't to bad as in how hard it was. Standardized testing takes much out of a person's energy mainly because of how it is setup.
You have to sit around doing this monotonous work for hours with short breaks in between certain parts. This can lead to a more stressful atmosphere. At my school we do it in the cafeteria on the lunch tables. The chairs on those tables have no backs. Sitting like that hurts after a bit.
The amount of work the test taker must do over this period of time is quite a bit, and most of the time for most people quite boring. This makes it harder to keep going, and the capacity to lose focus becomes much, much higher, therefore possibly making the scores lessen.
This testing will be even worse for those in the Chemistry AP class because they just took their AP test today as well. Three days of science standardized testing, wonderful.
Most of standardized testing is well standardized and in a format that is easier to grade than other formats, multiple choice is what the format is for much of it. Multiple choice tests make it so you don't even have to know how to do the problem in some situations and can use logic or guess the answer. All this is really doing is testing students test taking abilities.
Sometimes on standardized tests there are free response questions, which include short answer, essay, and other micellanious types that require the tester to write out the answer. Given the sheer volume of tests that are done these questions will probably not have much time spent on them, gradingwise. This really defeats the purpose of these questions. For many types they are analyzed for quantity and references to things that may be completely wrong not the quality of whats written. This doesn't show what the tester can do writing wise, it shows how much fluff they can put into their writting. Fluff is ok sometimes but doesn't add much to the quality of the writing. That is one of the reasons why I have a problem doing writing asignments inschool, well that and having problems starting them.
On top of this, since the many standardized tests do not directly effect the tester, the tester won't care as much about the test and how they do on it. (This is one of the reasons why our school has a new policy regarding the necap scores, if you get higher then a certain score on the ones you can be exempt from the final of your next class that is related to that subject.) Since the tester does not care as much about the test, they will not try as hard, or at all, as they would on something that affects themself.
Standardized tests shouldn't depict how well a student can perform, how skillful they are , or the quality of what they can produce in a certain are. The SAT's play a major roll in college acceptance. Almost all colleges that I know of require them. Only one that I know of has another option, which is the aplicant puts together a protfolio of what they think shows what they are capable of. This makes the SAT's a big deal for just about all college goers, and causes many of them to worry and stress over them and how they did. These tests do not really depict what a person is capable of, they show how good of a test taker they are. Being a good test taker does not mean that they are a good student. Many good students are horrible at taking tests, and do not perform well on the SAT's which hurts their chances at getting into the college(s) that they want to get into.

Conclusion: Standardized tests should be taken as how smart or how good ones abilities are in a certain area. And a few other things you probably already knew or have come to.

Well that is all the time I have for now. Hopefully I can get more posts on this here blog. Maybe some more rants about things or some other things that I have in mind. Any ideas or suggestions, just leave a comment or email us. If you think you would like to join in this army of people writing for this blog just send me a message and I'll get to you when I can.

Numbah 1 signing out.
Moog

~Xac