For many students, every year after third grade has the same overall structure. In elementary school, everyone is taught the importance of passing whatever the year’s standardized test is, TEKS, TAKS, STAAR, the state decides. I personally believe that this is ridiculous.

 
In high school, this divide continues to widen. The seemingly endless testing somehow impacts the schedule of most everyone, and things become more complicated.

 
As a student, you must deal with many things that are brought up by the annual standardized tests. Many of these were a surprise to me.

 
Let me begin by saying: I attended a magnet middle school. Getting in to such a school essentially automatically proved that you met, and exceeded, the state’s expectations. With this said, I spent three years having the idea ingrained into my brain that the STAAR test, or whatever low-level test is thrown at me by Texas, is to be interpreted as a joke.

 
Entering high school at an above average public school was quite a surprise. As we began to near the end of the year, and the beginning of testing, we stopped making progress in classes like algebra and biology. At this point, yet another divide becomes clear in the student body: those who need the weeks upon weeks spent reviewing, and those that interpret the time as useless.

 
A number of changes could be made to make them less terrible. Simply focusing less on the exam would make a huge difference; the once one-sided question of “satisfy the state’s desires, or let the teachers do their jobs?” would be answered, or at least balanced further.

 
In sum, I still don’t take this testing seriously. Throughout the often-changing ways of preparing for the highly dreaded standardized exam, it has always remained clear to me that people are put under too much pressure for something that is essentially purely for statistics. The least that we could do is pay evenly distributed attention to both regular academics, and whatever else the state throws at us.