Tests are not the best form of Assessment

By Adreesh Roy

      One of the many faults in standardized testing is pressure.  Pressure is the anxiety you feel before an important event in your life.  This is what affects a first time test-takers and others who haven’t mastered the skill to control the nervousness that comes with them.  Test anxiety leads to competitiveness.  This creates an environment in which getting a good score becomes so important that young students resort to cheating and other immoral activities. Students that succumb to the pressure and anxiety of tests face repetitive failure. This gives the student a negative outlook and an apathy towards education in general, saying, “why bother?”  This caused an alarming drop out rate when pressure takes the form of psychological illness, students suffer from depression, which has led to suicides, obesity and other general health problems.  Testing children as early as 5 or 6 and thus exposing them to the ills of test anxiety should force us to question the value that assessments bring.

    

     To pass most tests, all the material must be memorized and reproduced.  But tell me this; do you see a person working on a pen and paper test in his or her office? I didn’t think so.  In the real world, tests do not exist.  Projects are basically the assessments in the work world. It shows both creativity and knowledge all in one end product.  I strongly feel that standardized tests should be replaced with projects that require creativity and collaboration on the part of individuals.

     The iPod is a perfect example of the creativity of the human mind and the synergy that results when humans work together.  The project was conceived in India.  2 people made software for storing music digitally in a format never known before.  We consider this the “initial product team.” The multi- national company Apple discovers this is while scouting for promising new products into which it would like to expand.  “The Managing Team” in America consisting of product developers, marketers and savvy business people now design and make the actual iPod as we know it. When the need to mass-produce this piece of innovation arrived the “production team” in China took over.  The invention and popularity of the iPod is a true example of the challenges in today’s workplace.  

    Our tests should prepare us to work in such a multi-cultural workplace where the creativity of individuals and their unique skills are put to test.  In such a world, repetitive and cookie-cutter assessments hold no significance.