Opinion: The value of test taking

What does a test really measure? Is it how smart you are, how well you memorized the material or how well your teacher taught you the material? Tests are taken all over the country, but for what reasons? The school districts claim it’s to show how well we have done as students, but more than half of most tests are based on material that either does not make sense or material that we have not seen.

For example our teachers always tell us that the test that we take depends on whether or not our school gets funded or not. They also say that they are important for the school because the better we do on the test better it reflects on our personal record. Furthermore, many of my fellow peers find tests unnecessary and a hassle. Many of them do not take tests seriously because they believe that tests are not well adjusted to what we are leaning or being taught.

To add to this point, some of the tests we take are designed to mentally test how well you can do under certain circumstances, most of which set up students for failure. The test that would be an example of this would be the CAASPP science test that involved work that we had learned years back. This is a set up for failure because the district expects us to remember science from freshman year while still learning about physics or physiology. Why should we take a test that cannot define how smart we are or how well we do in school. This one test can forever define us by a score, an indication of whether we’re to be considered “smart” or not.    

The test that we take are set up for us to fail we need to take a series of test that we study all year for and still fail because the test have unrelated questions on it that we have never seen before. For example I took the the CAASPP math test and I seen questions on it that I never even studied. If these test are designed to make us fail what are we studying all year for if we are going to get asked a random question we do not know. Are all these test really necessary for us to take or does the district really want us to fail our test?