The State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test has been a routine catastrophe in the lives of Texas students and is right around the corner. Personally, the thought of STAAR tests makes my skin crawl. I am not the kind of student who thrives at taking these yearly tests. The thought of sitting silently in a room with my peers, struggling to remember what I studied throughout the year is excruciating.

I constantly ask why I have to take a test to prove I understand a topic. If this test determines my progress what do the other dozens of tests, quizzes, projects, daily work, and homeworks prove? But after doing some research to back up personal complaints I realized there are more negative aspects of STAAR testing, and that all of my concerns are completely valid.

The most stressful thing and the biggest downside for me is the time limit. Four hours sounds like a lot of time, and it is in some cases, but it adds so much anxiety to an already high pressure situation. I get so anxious about finishing in the four hours that I will either rush my work, or stare at the clock every twenty minutes. An internal panic takes over as I struggle to cram in all 50+ questions.

The STAAR test has been updated in the past years, yet the curriculum being taught has not. Why is it that the test are getting harder, but we aren’t even being taught what is on them. Most teachers have no other choice than to “teach to the test”, which is exactly what is sounds like, they don’t have the freedom to teach creative topics or even the necessary lessons for life. The State Board of Education has complete control over teachers, and are the ones who are failing  the students. According to savetexasschools.org, the school board has since updated the STAAR tests for both World Geography and Biology but has not taken the necessary steps to have students or teacher prepared. Those are the two tests whose curriculum is failing us, leaving us unprepared, and bottom line is setting students up for failure.

There are many problems with this test, and to go along with that, there are also many solutions. Personally, I think the best solution is to just simply get rid of the test. School is already filled with enough stress, challenges, work, and plenty of wasted time. Those four hours should be spent learning, plus students already take quizzes and tests to show progress and to test what we know. Why don’t our teachers keep a record of our tests and quizzes throughout the year, that also is specific enough to sow the actual areas where we struggle and where we succeed.

As a school, I feel like we all have the same opinions of standardized testing, some may shrug it off as just a lazy complaint but it is much more. It is sad that discrediting an individual and teaching students that a number determines their self worth just to decide funding distribution from the federal government. There are other ways to calculate our progress than sitting down and taking an excruciatingly long test. Students are defined by their test scores, but why.