By Staff
The Brownell Beat
Brownell MS
1st Place
Division MS, News Writing
Editorial
On Wednesday, October 14th, all of the Brownell 8th graders sat down in the MPR and took the PSAT (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test) for four straight hours. As many 8th graders could probably testify, it was tiring, long, and half of the questions didn’t make sense.
School-mandated tests happen year, and are almost always dreaded. Last year, a new test took place instead of the MEAP (Michigan Educational Assessment Program), called the M-Step (Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress). The M-Step made the MEAP seem easy, and the PSAT made testing seem altogether hopeless.
Standardized testing has an important place in our educational system, but are the effects always positive? According to www.ascd.org, standardized testing is, “to create assessment tools that permit someone to make a valid inference about the knowledge and/or skills that a given student possesses in a particular content area.” That’s a lot of pressure for just one test. As middle schoolers, we don’t need that kind of stress and anxiety all revolving around a test.
Standardized testing shouldn’t be implemented upon middle schoolers because one test does not show the true measure of a student at this age.