Telling Fish to Climb Trees: Standardized Testing and its Flaws

 

 

“Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid. “-Albert Einstein

One of my ongoing struggles is my performance on standardized test. In elementary school and middle school, it was the PSSAs, in high school, it was the ACTs and SATs, and now that I am in college it is the GREs. One thing that these test all have in common aside from the fact that they are standardized is that the majority of them predicted that I wouldn’t do well where I was going. For middle school, this wasn’t that big of a deal. However, in high school and, now in college, as I am looking at advanced degrees this is a huge deal. I have proved time and time again that my test scores don’t speak to my intellectual abilities, yet I face the same struggles everytime I look for a new degree to pursue. Admissions committees don’t believe that I am a strong enough candidate because this test says so.  We live in a society that puts so much emphasis on attaining degrees and building a career, but we regulate entry to these programs with a tool that systematically oppresses and discriminates against students who aren’t a part of the majority. In this blog post, I will be discussing the standardized test, what they are, and the limitations that they have in regards to predicting a student’s potential to perform well.