Why I Hate Tests

When I mentioned to my roommate one night that I hoped to eliminate testing as much as possible in my own classroom, instead of being met with support, I was met with a mixture of surprise and possibly a bit of horror.

"How are you going to assess them on if they learned the material then? Where will their grades come from?" she asked. 

"Well, I think you can assess student performance in other ways besides exams," I explained. "I don't want a student's entire grade riding on how they do on a test. I think every student is brilliant, every student has something they are good at. But for a lot of students, testing is not one of the things they are good at, and I think its unfair to simply cater to the students that are good at taking tests." 

I understand why my roommate was a bit aghast at my statement. In high school, she had no trouble taking tests, and she is still that way even while taking difficult science courses that way beyond my understanding. So, how would eliminating testing affect students like her, who benefit from the testing culture? 

Well, my first point against the test-taking culture that schools have built up is the huge pressure to get the right answer, instead of encouraging kids to cultivate understanding, appreciation, and even passion for mathematics. Think about it. When was the last time you learned something, and I mean really learned something? Did you learn through just automatically getting the answer? Or was it a trial and error process that involved making mistakes and having to go backwards in your steps a few times before really finding the answer? I know when I was first taking courses for what was then my math minor, I was completely unfamiliar with proofs and mathematical logic. I absolutely had to make mistakes before I truly understood what I was doing, and, thankfully, I had a professor that encouraged mistakes. He let us submit our problem sets multiple times so we would go to his office hours and continue learning from our mistakes. It was actually because of this class that I developed a passion for math and knew I wanted to teach it. Do you think if I had just been tested time and time again, and consistently been made to feel like I was "stupid" unless I got the right answer on the first time, that I would have wanted to major in math? Of course not. In fact, I may have even been discouraged from pursuing it at all, and may have changed to a different field altogether. So, if this test-taking culture, something that's very common in universities, would have gotten myself down, how do you think it makes our students feel? If we can remove this type of "right answer" mentality altogether, then students will be less discouraged and more motivated to succeed, since they know that its okay to make mistakes. The answer to removing this mentality, however, is a move towards eliminating test-taking.
My second point against test-taking culture is that it reduces students to nothing more than a test score. Students are not statistics. They are not a mere number to help make our school look better. Students are young people, with hopes, dreams, likes, and dislikes, yet when we test the students incessantly in the ways that I see nowadays, we reduce these people to nothing but a percentage. Quite frankly, I did not decide to enter education to simply define students and my school by test scores. I decided to enter education to make a difference, and making students feel as if they are defined by how well they do on a test makes no difference. I want to encourage passion and drive in my students, and I want to see more kids go on to get a good education and succeed in their respective fields. However, if we continue to reduce students to nothing but numbers, then this will serve to do nothing but discourage them. Why do we base a students' ability to succeed in college on their ACT score? I have met many insanely brilliant people who did not score well on the ACT, or any standardized test for that matter, simply because how well a student takes a test does not determine their value and their intelligence. Case in point: I have been friends with a guy from my hometown for about 11 years now. He has created his own coding, he has built computers, and he has to be one of the smartest and most insightful people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. However, he has never scored well on tests, and since being reduced to a number, a statistic, he has been greatly discouraged. This same friend ended up dropping out of college due to this discouragement, and although he has found an awesome career path without a college education, I can't help but think that if so much emphasis hadn't been placed on test scores, that he may still be in college.
My last point against test-taking is this: What does testing really accomplish? I'm not talking about the ACT, SAT, or any other standardized test. (I do think we overtest kids in this area as well, but that's another subject entirely that I could go on about all day). Why do we test kids so much? Why, at the end of a unit, do we think, Hmm, I need to test my students on all this material? We cover about 12 chapters of material or so in a year. If we test students after every one of these chapters, that amounts to 12 tests a year, plus a final. I have college professors that wouldn't do this, so why do we? You may argue, "Well, college students have five different classes with different professors every semester." However, if we consider that some classes are a semester long in high school, and we still over-test kids, I still ask: What is the point? What does test-taking accomplish? Yes, I know we want to see "how students are doing" and "what they understand." Why test them? Try formative assessments, or non-graded quizzes or tests. Try projects. Try simply looking at their work. Try discussions. I just think there are more answers than testing kids. How can we encourage kids to pursue a career in mathematics if all we do is discourage them with testing? If kids are constantly thinking, "I'm so bad at this, I'll never be good at this, I hate math" all because we consistently test them and promote just right answers, then of course kids won't want to pursue math. We need more kids in STEM, and kids are discouraged from it due to the excessive amounts of testing. I argue that there is very little merit to test-taking, and I think there are other ways to measure a student's knowledge of the material.
So, call me crazy. I don't care. All I know is that I've seen what this test-taking culture looks like, and I'm not happy about it. What does testing do besides stress out, discourage, and altogether hurt kids? Nothing. I think we should encourage a classroom that encourages students, and lets them think mistakes are okay. I want to promote learning and excitement for math, and I think the first step towards doing this is eliminating testing as much as I possibly can. I truly hope that others follow suit.