Students are constantly judged by the numbers on their report cards, but what do they actually mean? Absolutely nothing. Why does a student’s future depend on percentage grades they got on some tests they took in 10th grade?

Should standardized tests be abolished completely? No. But they should mean significantly less regarding whether or not a student gets to be successful when they’re adults.

Sure, one test isn’t going to determine whether a student is going to college or not, but it still drastically affects their class average which goes toward their GPA. 

I think students should be graded less on their understanding of a topic, and more on the effort they’re putting into learning and understanding it. They may not need to know whether all the elements on the periodic table are metals, non-metals, or metalloids, but they’re most definitely going to need to know how to get work done well on a deadline. 

Not only this, but most of what we learn in school isn’t going to do anything for students on their actual career path. For some jobs you may need to know the pythagorean theorem, but that’s irrelevant in most people’s lives.

School should be more tailored to jobs that students are interested in pursuing. In college, you pick a major and that determines what classes you take to get a degree in, and I think high school should be more similar to that. 

If I want to be a lawyer, I’m going to need to take more classes related to English and history than math and science, whereas if I’m a doctor I’d have to take more math and science. 

I think failing a test has far too much backlash for what it is. Failing a test doesn’t show incompetence, it just shows that a student doesn’t quite understand that material. 

I think that instead of letting that failed test bring down their class average, teachers should require a reteaching and reassessment of the topic until they pass. This would function as a way to strengthen their knowledge on the subject, as well as teach them that it’s okay to be unfamiliar with a certain topic. 

Teaching students that it’s not okay to not be good at a certain subject is extremely unhealthy for their mental health. We should instead teach them that it’s okay to make mistakes, but they also need to make up for doing things the wrong way. It’s useless to dwell on the lack of understanding, so instead we need to help them develop the work ethic that goes into learning.