Getting Rid of Standardized Testing

Although some people may believe that standardized testing is necessary to check up on both the teachers and students, it causes unnecessary stress, some people’s knowledge comes out in different ways, and it causes educators to alter their teaching style. There are 3 different types of learners, kinesthetic, visual, and reading/writing, yet our standardized testing only covers few of them. Instead of SOLs, we could give them smaller anonymous tests so that it is less stressful for them. By doing this, it would give Loudoun County more honest and accurate answers. Virginia uses SOLs to make sure that their students are “meeting the commonwealth’s expectations for achievement in English, mathematics, science and history,” according to the Virginia Department of Education. Yet this is hard to measure because the increase in cortisol (a stress hormone) during SOLs, causes most students to do 40% worst then predicted.