By William Sawyer '25
Grades are crucial for students worldwide, even for those who couldn’t care less if they have zeros across the board. Through most forms of curriculum, students learn through a teachers’ in-person lessons, including speaking and writing. During this cycle, a prominent figure looms over the minds of many stressed students; a piece of paper—a test. The idea is simple. Fill out a piece of paper with various questions regarding the information to see how much stuck with the students. Like most ideas, they become more complex once you put them into practice.
Andrew Beltcappellino is a Living Environment and Physics teacher at NEST+m. Talking about pop quizzes he says, “I understand the rationale behind [them]. Students don’t always feel like they have to be on their toes, and I know students may zone out for the majority of the class and try to catch up toward the end. Apathy can be detrimental to not only the student but also their classmates. The rationale behind having pop quizzes is to make sure you are on task and ready to go every day. But it just makes the school feel like a gotcha; I know when I was a student I did not like the idea of pop quizzes, they gave me a lot of anxiety even though they were uncommon.” The idea of pop quizzes makes sense, to try to encourage students to absorb the material and be more prepared, they can make the school feel more like a gamble. It ultimately negatively results in students overworking themselves.
Tests are given in school to determine how well a student understood the most recent unit. As Mr. Beltcappellino says, “An exam should match what the general expectation is for your students. So if you’re giving an exam as a teacher, I think you should expect your students to do well at it. I think that exams can be a good representation of mastering the material. Now is that the only way of showing mastering material? No. There are different methods, such as doing projects or discussions as we’ve done in class. So exams are not the end-all-be-all, but I think they offer a reasonable means of assessment of learning.” Exams are just one of many ways teachers can assess students. They are not perfect. However, they offer teachers a chance to assess the knowledge of their students.
Because tests are often announced a week or two in advance, many students can begin studying early. There are, of course, some students who don’t study either because they don’t care, are confident in their abilities, or simply forget. However, most students follow the famous study routine we call cramming. Cramming is most commonly known as the attempt to absorb large amounts of information in preparation for an upcoming exam, often just a night before it is due. Many students forget the information shortly after the test. While the problems of cramming are more related to the overall education system, they are still relevant. Why spend so much time studying the night before if students are likely to forget the next day? This is prevalent in math, where units generally build off previous units.
So far, we’ve only discussed general exams that your teachers create, and while doing poorly on them will negatively affect student’s grades, individual tests are not usually detrimental. However, admission exams are different. The SHSAT is a unique standardized test. How students do on this test, and this test alone determines whether or not you get into one of the eight specialized high schools in NYC. SAT scores can end up being detrimental to student’s chances of getting into their dream colleges. I never personally agreed with this, and as Mr. Beltcappellino also mentioned, students spend time and money that they don’t have on courses to increase their grades as much as possible.
Standardized testing is a tricky subject with many different perspectives and discussions surrounding it, and a single article couldn’t cover the entire issue. While there is no doubt it has its flaws, standardized testing is ultimately a valuable tool for teachers and indeed has made its mark on our society.
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