Safiye Yumusak

Head in hand, junior John Pinion faces a desk covered in standardized test bubble sheets. For many students, these papers represent the high pressures faced during standardized testing.

Standardized tests are supposed to measure how well one has learned what the state deems necessary at a given age. Oftentimes though, it measures anything but that. It measures how well of a day you were having. It measures how much money your family is able to provide you for a well-funded education. It measures whether you are allowing your mind to fit in the box and conform.

As Northwestern University economist Joel Mokyr explains, the current American school system was tailor-made to raise factory workers for the newly industrialized nation. It has now been 185 years since the end of the Industrial Revolution. Countless aspects of society have evolved: healthcare, politics, technology, economy, communication and more. So why hasn’t education? 

Nordic and Scandinavian countries, like Finland, are widely acclaimed as having the best educational systems in the world. They also do not administer many mandatory standardized tests. It’s quite unlikely that this correlation is coincidental; thereby suggesting that America is not in dire need of standardized testing in order to truly educate students. A more equitable and well-being based system, modeled after these exemplary countries, can be fostered by minimizing testing pressure, giving teachers autonomy in their classrooms and emphasizing holistic growth, which can then cultivate stronger academic performance and allow students to flourish. 

The Harvard Opportunity Insights has derived that students from the top 1% income families are roughly 13 times more likely to score a 1300 or higher on the SAT than students in the bottom percentages, which is ironic coming from a school where 15% of students are in that top 1% of income. This cliff of difference makes it hard for truly intelligent students born with the misfortune of poverty to climb academic ranks and compete with students who have been spoon-fed tutors since birth.

This unfortunate reality exposes the true face of the “meritocracy” that standardized testing promises: that these innocent-looking bubble sheets consistently reward privilege instead of aptitude. When test scores so closely follow household income, the exams cease being diagnostic learning tools and become mirrors of access to resources.

What is often ignored is the mental toll this system takes upon its subjects. For students growing up in poverty, standardized testing whispers the incessant message that their circumstances will always speak louder than their curiosity, creativity or drive. The pressure to perform under rigid, high-stakes conditions on one groggy morning disproportionately harms those who are already navigating instabilities like food insecurity, housing crises or family responsibilities. In this sense, standardized testing not only measures inequality, but actively reinforces it.

On the other hand, those who benefit from this passivity are not hard to identify. Testing companies like CollegeBoard, with a convenient monopoly in the testing field, generate billions of dollars annually. School districts that are underfunded, understaffed and undercut can shift blame onto “low-achieving” students rather than confronting the real villain of structural neglect. Standardized testing takes the place of a convenient scapegoat, clean, easy, safe, while the much needed educational reform remains gathering dust.

If the goal of education is to foster capable, informed members of society, then an essential question comes to mind: are standardized testing serving students, or are students serving standardized tests? Other nations have shown that trust in students and educators, an emphasis on holistic development and investments in equity and well-being will yield a brighter generation of pupils.

I have cried over more tests than anything else. Perhaps that means something is innately wrong with me, but perhaps it means something is even more innately wrong with our education system. In the current environmental, political and economic atmosphere of the world we really should be working on solutions, especially as we are the younger generation, destined to inherit the world from its current leaders. But we are distracted, maybe even on purpose, from what really matters by the looming cloud of academic stress hanging over our heads.