It’s another mundane and stressful school night during my sophomore year. Although it’s three o’clock in the morning, I cannot sleep yet; I’m paralyzed by the fear of failing my DBQ essay for my history class, which I’ll have to take a few hours later. I’ve spent the last five hours attempting to figure out the right sentences and details to include, but I’m not making much progress. My test is only out of seven points, so even reducing a single point reduces my score by 14% – in other words, a death sentence to my average. My eyes sting, my skin is dry, and I feel nauseous; needless to say, both my physical and mental state is rapidly deteriorating. As I toil away at this seemingly impossible task, I break down in tears, thinking: “Will the GPA that I’ve spent so long preserving be destroyed, just because of this one test?” 

Fortunately enough for me, I was informed by my teacher the next morning that my “test” would not actually be graded. But more importantly, the negative emotions that I experienced also led me to consider: why was I so stressed out over that one test? Why was all of my focus, at least during that time frame, directed towards excessively cramming for uninteresting exams? Why was my entire high-school experience centered around the singular theme of tests, more tests, and even more tests?

After careful consideration, I’ve concluded the main reason for why this is the case: our education system places too much emphasis on standardized testing. As such, it does not truly incentivize students to learn out of their own passion. On the contrary, it is expected that students must always demonstrate their understanding of the course material through mundane tests. Unfortunately, such tests are often specifically designed to test their ability to quickly answer questions, rather than testing how they can apply prior knowledge and use critical thinking skills.

At the same time, students feel pressured to do well on these exams, which may contribute to a buildup in mental stress and negative emotion over time. This is because of the weight of exams: one’s grades are also a ticket to higher academic institutions like college, as well as other future opportunities. The Pew Research Center cites that 61% of teens are pressured to have good grades, and that 59% plan to attend college, showing a direct relationship between the two (Horowitz and Graf). The fact that students must get good test scores to unlock opportunities like college also incentivizes them to tie their level of capability to their test scores; in reality, however, the two are completely uncorrelated. This issue is also made problematic by the influence that students have over each other. At my school – Stuyvesant High School – the academic scene is quite competitive, to the point where I constantly hear students in every hallway discussing what they got on their last test. It is almost universally believed that a 94 is in a lower tier than a score of 99, which is great but not as satisfying as “100%.” On the other hand, if you get an 80 (which actually means you got most of the questions correct), it’s perceived as the “bare minimum” for passing. Being around this type of environment fosters an unhealthy obsession over grades and your relative “class ranking” with respect to your peers, and was part of why I felt like I was in a perpetual cycle of misery during my sophomore year. 

In order to address this fundamental flaw in our education system, I would like to propose several potential solutions. Firstly, I believe that schools must somehow reduce the weight of standardized tests; for instance, tests can be replaced with an alternative form of assessing students’ knowledge. One such alternative could involve personal, untimed assessments of each student by the teacher. This would be more effective than timed tests, considering that students perform academically better when they are not under high pressure to succeed; in other words, even if a student is particularly knowledgeable in a subject, they still might not do well in a test if they cannot adequately handle stress during a high-stakes, timed environment. As this article from EdWeek points out, assessing students' abilities to apply knowledge by setting a time limit is “artificial,” because understanding how to apply knowledge is not an automatic process, and you also can’t possibly expect all students to work at the same pace. On the other hand, if a teacher can assess every student individually, then the student has ample time to directly talk and explain their thought process on the topic they are being assessed on. If this is not a feasible option for certain schools, then the weight of standardized tests should at least be significantly reduced, while other factors like one's effort and participation are considered to a greater extent; that way, students don’t have to worry about their grades significantly dropping because of a single test bearing too much weight.

For those who are skeptical about how effective an education system could be without standardized testing, here’s a real-life example of such a system: In Finland, they completely avoid standardized testing, and yet the quality of their education statistically outranks that of the United States. This shows students can still receive a high-quality education, even without standardizing testing and the unnecessary stress that it causes students. Furthermore, my stance on this issue is not an isolated one, as there are many other students that feel the same way that I do. For instance, this article from the New York Times includes suggestions from students about how to improve America’s education system, with many students remarking on how there should be a “de-emphasis” on grades, as well as proposing to completely remove standardized testing in order to promote a “better learning environment” (The Learning Network). 

Schools can also improve their education system by actively looking for feedback from their own students. During my freshman year, when students were stuck in quarantine, my school administration sent out mental health surveys because it understood that many students were (reasonably enough) stressed out during this time period. Students also had access to email templates that they could write to teachers, if they felt like they were given more homework than the allowed daily amount. In that sense, I think all schools could benefit from both having an open administration, and also teachers that are willing to reform both their curriculum and methods of teaching and assessing in order to give students the best learning experience possible.

It is my hope that schools can take these proposed methods into consideration, in order to address the flaws of our education system – the biggest of which is standardized testing. What our schools need to focus on is not overwhelming students with heavily weighted tests, but rather establishing an environment that promotes students to be passionate about learning; this is only possible when they’re not excessively stressed, or attempting to regurgitate information in hopes of being able to quickly finish an upcoming exam. Given that the American education system has been stagnant in quality over the years, however, it will take a considerable amount of effort and time before effective reform is able to occur.