“Everyone is a genious. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it’ll spend it’s whole life thinking its stupid.” Albert Einstein.

In the US many kids are being tested on the ability to take a test and think the way the state wants them to think. After the No Child Left Behind Act of 2008 the US went from 18th place of the world math leaderboard to 31st.

Many kids are being tested on the way they takes tests and not about their ability on the subject. According to Anxiety and Depression Association of America, almost 25% of kids in high school or college experience test anxiety, this is when you know the material but when it is time to take the test you freeze up. This is very unfair to children who are trying to learn but cannot function well during hard tests.

Also, many kids learn well on homework and in class work but when this test comes around they don’t do as well, sometimes this is because the test is harder or because they just forget when they get nervous. Also, grades are greatly impacted by tests and when kids do poorly on test their grade is greatly affected.

Another issue with standardized testing is they are unfair to children with special needs. According to Statistics of Special Needs Children, over 14% of the teenage population are kids with some sort of disability that makes then have an unfair disadvantage while taking standardized tests.

Most standardized tests are also non objective, stress causing, expensive and show no creativity. 64% of the test is useful and 14% are not useful, shouldn’t that bee 100% useful? According to NPR, Finland is currently at the top of the math and English education in the world and they do not issue external standardized testing.

An easy solution to this problem would be social and emotional skills surveys or game based assessments. This is not an easy fix but with enough time and corporation the world of testing could be changed for the better.