More than two million students take the SAT each year, each one hoping that their test score will help them gain admission into the college of their choice. One of the more popular test dates is December 6, so for many students, right now is a high stress time. Students, especially high school seniors, may feel pressure to study every waking moment in their quest for a good test score.
One World Education 2013 Student Ambassador Jessica Li, who was a grade 12 student at Montgomery High School in Maryland, felt this pressure, even during her winter break. She opened her essay like this:
“Frosty morning. Christmas Eve. I woke to the cries of the tiger mother unsettled by the inconvenient truth that I had slept past 9:30 AM on the first day of winter break. “Time for SAT prep!” No smile. No breakfast. No “Merry Christmas, hon’.” Just a six-syllable imperative to start my long-awaited holidays.”
In her Reflection, The Academic Race, she explores the reasons behind the increased pressure for students to score so well on standardized tests. “In 2009, Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, initiated a new merit-based, $4.35 billion funding program for state-level public education. Winning states of this grant are recognized for ‘spurring innovative reforms in K-12 education’ which are measured by test scores,” she writes.
Further, she notes, “Even before Duncan’s program, since the passage of Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, students are hustled everyday about preparing for state-wide assessments, which, according to their teachers, ‘may very well determine the course of [their] lives.’”
Jessica is critical of this system – and the mounting pressure on students. How can she and her peers gain enough hands-on experience and truly learn about subjects that matter if their sole object is high scores on tests? She notes, “The most unfortunate consequence is the death of genuine learning and passion among youths. I’ve often heard this proclamation among my peers—‘I NEED to do this for college.’ Whether it’s scoring perfectly on a history project, winning a debate about immigration laws, or championing in math competitions, much to our dismay, at the root of all this vigor is often the looming prospect of college admissions.”
While Jessica acknowledges that she doesn’t have the perfect answer, she is emphatic that something needs to change. “Seeing friends who are so stressed by competitions that they acquire insomnia and depression is simply unacceptable. Our education should value solid learning and the building of character.”
Many people are reaching the same conclusion. In fact at the start of this school year, U.S. Secretary Duncan wrote an article saying: “Testing should never be the main focus of our schools…There’s a whole world of skills that tests can never touch that are vital to students’ success. No test will ever measure what a student is, or can be. It’s simply one measure of one kind of progress.”
We agree. And we’re proud to offer the One World Education Writing Program so that students like Jessica can discuss issues that matter to them while becoming better at research, writing, and crafting an argument, all skills that can help them with standardized tests but also serve them well throughout their lives.