Op-Ed: Standardized Testing Sucks

Evan Werner ’27

Few inventions have been as damaging to education as standardized tests. They are inequitable and uninspired. The questions aren’t just flawed — they’re often objectively bad. This past March, I read a PSAT reading passage so unnecessarily complicated that it felt like the writer had a personal vendetta against clarity. Or joy. Or the English language. 

On March 26th, tenth graders took the PSAT, and during those three hours, I sat painfully. The most honest answer I gave throughout the entirety of the test, was on the blank piece of scrap paper they gave us, where I wrote “this test sucks.” I enjoy reading, but not when it's a page-long passage about the peering patterns of orangutans or the history of brass instruments. The PSAT, SAT, Regents, and every other mass-produced test in between are not real measures of intelligence. They’re inaccurate, limiting, and frankly, pointless ways to evaluate a student’s worth or academic ability. The only thing they are consistently effective in doing, is adding stress to an already stressful high school life.  Standardized testing sucks. It sucks historically. It sucks philosophically. And it will continue to suck. It won’t stop. It’ll keep sucking — and sucking the soul of education down with it.

The history of standardized testing is just as disturbing as you would expect. Many of the popularized tests that still take a certain form in schools today were developed by eugenicists. In 1914, Howard Knox, an assistant surgeon with the U.S. Public Health Service, said that intelligence testing was helping to prevent the “contamination of our racial stock by turning back feeble-minded immigrants.” When migrants would arrive At Ellis Island, Knox classified them according to a scale that included terms like idiot, imbecile, feeble-minded, and moron, based on the examined person’s “mental age” and calculated using tests. Eugenicist Carl Brigham developed standardized tests for the U.S. military during World War I, which were then commissioned by the College Board and were extremely influential in the creation of the SAT. Brigham wrote in his 1923 book, “A Study of American Intelligence,” that testing, he believed, showed the superiority of “the Nordic race group”. The standardized testing that he developed was used to place 1.5 million people in groups segregated by race and “mental ability.” These tests were entrenched in racial bias, culture-specific questions, and scientifically inaccurate ways of measuring someone's true mental capacity, and these themes remain even today. Just as the Army intelligence tests were designed to distinguish the superior from the inferior, the SAT works the same way; designed to predict which students will do “well” in college and which will “not.” Standardized testing has always been about separating the “worthy” from the “unworthy.” -it’s just gotten better PR. Back then, it was “idiots” vs “geniuses.” Now, it’s “college-ready” vs “needs improvement.” The core assumption hasn’t changed: that human potential can be boiled down to a few hours in a silent room with a #2 pencil.

How can we measure students across the globe with the same ruler when they have not even been taught by the same system? While school may outwardly follow a similar model — classrooms, answers to pick, a march from one grade level to the next- the deeper realities of what is taught, how it is taught, and why it is taught differ dramatically. Standardized testing doesn’t just highlight educational differences; it reveals a larger illusion: the belief that learning can be made uniform, measurable, and comparable when, in truth, education is as varied and complex as the students themselves. It sets a so-called “standard” that’s anything but accurate. And while schools are expected to prepare students for these exams, like the SAT, this expectation only deepens the problem, pushing teachers toward “teaching to the test” instead of fostering real learning.

Most schools follow a standard curriculum with timelines for when students should hit certain educational milestones. It’s a huge loss when schools teach solely with a future standardized test in mind, cramming in facts instead of diving deep into meaningful topics. Teaching the test prompts teacher to dull their lessons, taking away from what they are passionate about, to what will hopefully allow their students to check a box on a test. In this way, teachers can not craft a curriculum that kids may genuinely find interesting and that they enjoy teaching. 

It’s especially infuriating when people talk about standardized testing as a way to level the playing field. The idea is to give everyone the same test and then see who stands out intellectually. But when you give everyone the same test without giving everyone the same education, the same opportunities, the same resources, you’re not leveling the playing field, you’re just pretending the field was level to begin with. Additionally, the test fails to measure the countless hours kids may put into their writing, sports, instruments, or art. It fails to assess someone's ability to speak on a topic, interpret it, and apply it to other things they have learned. It measures one minuscule aspect of education, and only ends up showing someone's ability to take a test and sit in a chair for hours, rather than testing their knowledge on a subject. 

Standardized testing truly teaches obedience. How well you can sit in a hot classroom for hours on end. How well can you pace yourself and finish the test on time? There’s no room for process, context, or nuance. You either get it right or you’re wrong. Life in general does not work that way-this test has no real-life application. The idea that this test predicts college readiness is the biggest academic hyperbole of our generation. College is about independence, risk-taking, and curiosity-meanwhile, the SAT trains us to follow instructions, not instincts. 

So with all this being said, what's next? I don't see anything changing in the near future. And unfortunately, by the time I apply to college, the SAT will probably become mandatory at most colleges again. If I had one wish, it would be for the SAT to go away. But the truth is, it still sits in front of me. Still something I have to prepare for. Still something I have to carve time out for, although every bone in my body wants to do literally anything else. And the same goes for every student out there. Find a kid and bring them to me- one who genuinely says “I can't wait for the day I take the SAT” with a huge grin on their face. You won’t. Because that kid doesn’t exist. 

And yet, we keep doing it. Because it’s easy to measure. Because it’s politically safe. Because it feels familiar. But just because something is easy to quantify doesn’t mean it’s worth measuring. And just because something is traditional doesn’t mean it’s right.