No Tests for Kids as Argued by a 4th Grader, PickyKidPix (daughter of Pragmatic Mom)

Everybody thinks tests are so good.  Why?  People think it is a good way to see a child’s smartness.  Why can’t teachers and principals  think of a different way?  They are the ones who have spent most of their time working with the student, so they should know about the child.  All it does is make the kid nervous, scared, and stressed. It doesn’t only cause this for the kid, it can also create these feelings for the teacher.  It is sometimes scary for the teacher even though they are not the ones doing the test.  Many teachers feel if the student does not do well, it is their own fault.   No one notices it but taking tests is just wasting time.  Why should you review when you can learn new things.  That is why I think kids should not have to take test.

Kids should not have to take test because you are doing the same thing over again in test form.  I was handing out a math test and it was the same work we have been doing for the past 3 weeks. It was really easy but super boring.  It was just wasting an hour of our time and we only have so much school left.  I went through the booklet looking at every problem.  I felt it was dumb doing the same kind of work so many times when your teacher knows somewhat of where you are in this skill.  I felt we could use our time more productively.  To me, this and all other tests are a waste of time because all you are doing is reviews.  I started working on the boring test.  Zooming past every problem, knowing everything.  I started checking over the first page, everything right.  Every question getting more and more boring.  I got into the open response.  I was shocked it was the same problem from last week.  I felt if we were even going to do an open response, it should be fresh, new questions, not boring old ones.  My teacher should know that I can do this.  I was bored.  I was tired.  I was tired of doing the same thing over again.  Why do we have to do this question again? At the end of the day it was a waste of an hour..  We could of spent that time learning something new, not reviewing old things.

I think kids should not have to take tests because they are stressful. It is stressful for not only the student, but also for the teacher. Take my fourth grade teacher for example.  She is always nervous preparing her student for MCAS making sure nothing looks unfamiliar.  She thinks the timing is not very good for the MCAS because MCAS is so early in March.  Often times the student learns more when the MCAS is over.

Another fourth grade teacher says “I don’t like MCAS because I only can just sit and watch and I can’t help.” She does not like when her students make silly mistakes when they know the skill.  She can not tell them they made a mistake because it is a test, but she really, really wants to because she knows they know the skill.  To make it even worse, sometimes students get trick questions, which upsets the teachers.  That is how some teachers get stressed out during a test.

Kids should not have to take tests because they are doing the same thing in test form and it is just getting the person stressed. For example my classmate Katherine got really annoyed and stressed when the grade had to take the long composition writing MCAS.  She said that she could not come up with a good topic.  All she did was stare at the page and hope it would disappear.  She started to freak out. She got scared she would not finish.  Katherine finally came up with a good topic.  She wrote the first draft then wrote the final draft.  She ended up turning it in on time but that is when she noticed it was a watermelon topic.  She got really scared for the results.  She got worried.  She has been freaked out even since.  Do you really want a kid to freak out because of the papers you put in front of them?

Another example is another of my classmates Avi.  He got really stressed about his test.  He had come into school not knowing about a geography test.  He had no idea it was today and he didn’t study.  He spent all his free time studying up to the second of the test.  At recess all you saw was Avi’s head buried in the study sheet.  When the test arrived in front of him, it was the easiest thing he had ever seen.  There was just 4 states with optional capitals that everyone knows.  Avi knew everything also because the last time we had geography there was a review for the test.  But the review was exactly the same as the real test.  It was a waste of his time and the whole time he was stressed and annoyed.

So that is exactly why kiids should not have to take tests.  All it is doing is getting the student stressed out and annoyed. MCAS just gets everybody stressed even the teachers.  What is the point of getting everybody stressed?  Does the state want everybody in public school to get scared and stressed just to get some score you can get in some other way?  You can always get the scores some other way without stressing kids out.  It might be a little harder, but it would pay off because you would not be scaring the kids and stressing them out as well as the teachers.  I think it may be okay to give a small little test once in awhile but the bottom line is kids should not have to take test.

Pragmatic Mom‘s 4th Grader, PickyKidPix, would have liked to have this question on her MCAS long response examination. Instead, she was the only child in her grade to the get the test booklet on poetry. This really made her mad because she was sick the day her teacher reviewed this. She blames me for keeping her home. Her teacher asks to remain anonymous but we would like to dedicate this essay to her. As you can see, she is a fabulous teacher who has taught her students well on how to express and support their opinions for an open response essay.