The importance of testing high school students is done through a multiple of ways. However, I will be using the two most pertinent sources used by colleges throughout the USA and will treat them as the same; the ACT and SAT. I believe that testing is of some importance. However, to treat it as a gauge of the effectiveness of your education, and to some degree a measure of your intelligence is a complete fallacy. For example, the colleges I am applying to have three universal things they place emphasis on. That is GPA, ACT/SAT scores, and your essays. Presumably, this is to evaluate your high school education, your testing, and your practical knowhow, such as writing taxes most minds and judges your individuality, use of grammar, etc. However, I feel this is a poor tool to effectively see if a student has the potential to become an alumni of a college. For example, does the person who has a 4.0 GPA (all A's for the people who do not use the 4 point grading scale) look so good if all they took during high school was the minimum number of core classes, and took easy classes such as PE and underwater basket weaving (yes it is a joke, but you get my point) compared to a lets say 3.6 GPA (roughly a B to B+ average, with a scattering of A or A- here and there) but they took advanced math and a crash course on Quantum Physics? This is just the inadequacies WITHIN one school, different schools have higher standards, different ways of grading, and so on. One student might get an "A" in one school, and the same exact person who learned the same exact things got an "A-" because the grading scale was off by a percent. The ACT is also not very accurate is testing "intelligence." Lets use an example of Jim and John. Jim and John always got the same exact answers, took the same classes, and got the same grades. However, John is a shade faster at getting his work done, not by much, but by a couple of minutes or so. Now John and Jim take the ACT Math portion, which has a ratio to finish you have to do one question per minute. John gets done right at the buzzer. Jim, who works a little slower, had about 5 questions left. Assuming that they both got the same answers up to the last five questions, where Jim could not finish, John got around a 30. Now Jim, got the same answers as John, but could not answer those five questions, therefore they are wrong. So now Jim has a 25. (at that level 5 questions translates into about 5 points). John isn't necessarily smarter or even better than Jim. However according to the Act, John is above the 95th percentile, while Jim is sitting at around the 80th. You wouldn't think that those five minutes really mattered, but they do. This Is just ONE unforeseen test variable that can come into play, and can drastically reduce your score. Essays are a necessary evil, and I can't really complain about them, since most of the time you can revise and revise and ask for help on those. My biggest problem is I have been told my content is excellent, and if I could learn how to structure and the proper use of the comma, I'd be a great writer. However that is my goal in life. Thoughts?
If you want to be a great writer you have a lot of work to do starting with the basics such as how to form proper paragraphs. That being said, what do you suggest a college use to test their applicants? Surely they must use some standard or their drop out rates will increase dramatically. Currently, there is no better way to test then with the items you listed or some sort of test. My first college required me to take placement tests and, although it was different, was still the same principle.
Ah I see, so that little sentence at the beginning is to cast aspirations of my writing style and simultaneously discredit my arguments by showing my lack of "proper" writing syntax. I am a big fan of looking over a students school, what that schools rating for education is, their curriculum, and a proper interview questioning them about their goals and what they have learned from school, and the associated extra-curricular activities. I am not saying standardized testing is obsolete at this point. I am just not in favor of it being a good 25-45% of a students chances of getting in.
No, that first sentence was a critique of your writing skills and could be considered constructive criticism. If you get offended every time someone critiques your work you are going to have a very long and troubled time in college. Any good part of finding problems with something, as you are doing with standardized testing, is to develop and share possible solutions. How would you do it differently? Would you simply allow anyone in?
Good sir, I have no quarrel with constructive criticism. However I wrote a very long and detailed dissertation on testing, and one of the lines was merely accepting a part of the testing as a necessary evil. I tied it in to how I could better myself by asking for help and challenging myself to make it better. However I found that a "critique" followed up by a question that directly challenges my thesis, generally is an attempt to discredit me. I apologize if that was not the case. Well, I find that some people, notably myself, have troubles with testing, and that does not make them any less intelligent. Also some colleges have a "broad" perspective of a skillset to get in. For example, I know of a math genius, he is taking calculus 3 and is still a sophomore in high school. He struggles to write quality papers though. So if perchance he wanted to be a mathematician one day, and decided to go to a prestigious math college, he would probably fail to get in. Simply because he cannot write a good essay. There are inequalities with an across the board method of admissions that fail to consider some variables.
Notice what I did there? Makes it much easier to read for the rest of us. If a person has trouble taking tests then they will not do well in college which has an enormous amount of testing involved. It would be better to weed out these individuals before they take a spot and end up dropping out or failing anyways. That being said, there are plenty of places that can help a person with "test anxiety" if you have it.
Having gone through the SAT and ACT last year, here's my two cents. The tests don't matter. Colleges don't need some sort of "snap shot" of how a person is doing in school. One test doesn't prove anything. However years and years of establishing how a student does in school is more important because then you can understand how a student does in a situation closer to the one they'll have in school. College isn't just tests and studying. A lot of what is learned isn't in the classroom. It's what a student decides to make of their time there. Now the second point I'll address is about easier vs. more difficult classes. When you were a kid, you probably had a harder time with your alphabet. Now, it's expected you can write and read. It's not about what you learned, but if you could learn at that level. Colleges are looking at if you developed the skills in that class because then you can apply those lessons to other classes as well. The grade is just simply an indication of how well you learned.
