Voices: High school over-testing fails college students

J.D. Capelouto | Boston University

When President Obama announced his Testing Action Plan for high schoolers last week — which aims to reduce the amount of time students spend taking standardized tests — the move was met with general ambivalence by my college peers.

While just about everyone I talked to said they hated taking standardized tests, they preferred to put that strenuous, stressful part of their lives behind them and forget about it.

Most college students, though, do not realize the extent to which standardized over-testing in high school negatively impacts students’ experiences once they get to college. We should be outwardly praising the president’s efforts rather than skimming an article and just saying, “That’s cool, I guess.”

Obama’s initiative aims to reduce class time spent taking standardized tests down to 2%.

For a little bit of comparison, I come from a Title IX inner-city, public school in midtown Atlanta called Henry W. Grady, where students in 2014 spent an average of 20% of instructional days taking some kind of school-, district- or state-mandated test, according to data collected from Grady teachers by The Southerner. (In the fall of 2013, 8% of instructional days were impacted and only 3 % in 2012 and 2011.)

Imagine if you had English once a day, but every Friday was spent bubbling in numbers. There was the Writing Diagnostics, the Reading-Plus Diagnostic, the Student Learning Outcome (SLO) Pre- and Post-Assessment, the Performance Series Computer Adaptive Assessment, the Benchmark Assessment, the Georgia High School Writing Test, the Georgia Milestones test and the PSAT, not to mention the End of Course Tests taken during “testing week” every May. And yes, those are real test names.

So I know firsthand how these tests — aimed at increasing accountability and strengthening curriculum — can be so detrimental to students once they get to college. How many standardized tests have I taken since getting to Boston University? None. Most exams are short answer or essay form.

Sure, I’ve taken multiple-choice exams and used Scantrons, but it was all based on the individualized material from that class, not some institutional curriculum created by a higher body that decided what “all students in (insert grade level) should know.”

Most standardized tests in grade school are based on rote memorization of facts rather than learning broader trends, developing critical thinking skills and creating valuable class discussion. These are the traits that most are valuable in college and they’re what we should be teaching our elementary, middle and high schoolers. Colleges don’t really care, for example, that you know Abraham Lincoln got rid of slavery if you can’t place the Emancipation Proclamation in the greater context of history.

So why are we teaching young people these “skills” and facts that they won’t need in a few years?

Many say it’s for teacher accountability; to make sure they're teaching their students “what they should be.” This takes a completely backwards approach to college and life preparation and prioritizes upper-level approval over individual student achievement. Teachers are forced to focus on themselves — and meeting what I feel are meaningless testing benchmarks — instead of teaching their students skills that will properly prepare them for college (and hopefully the real world as well).

So, fellow college students, next time you hear about a push to reduce time spent testing in grade school like Obama’s Testing Action Plan, don’t just stand idly by. Spread the word. Applaud it. Think about how much more you — as a college student—would be prepared if you spent less time learning how to take a test and more actually engaging with concepts, other students and the world around you.



J.D. Capelouto is a Boston University student and fall 2015 USA TODAY College correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.