It’s that time of year again! State testing is in full swing, but is the student body happy?

After interviewing one hundred and thirty-eight Mayfield eighth graders, the outcome resulted in sixty-eight students saying they were not stressed out about AIR testing. The other seventy students said that they were stressed. Teacher always tell students that the AIR test is not for a grade, but that students should try on the test. Besides the fact that one test at the end of the year basically determines what you understand from this year, the state tests are not very accurate measurements of learning.

How the test works is that the teachers cannot know what is going to be on the test but are supposed to teach students to the best of their ability. How can you possibly test a student on material that they sometimes are not even taught or did not spend enough time on?

As students move up a grade, the amount of state tests the students are responsible for increases. As a seventh grader, you are required to take the Math and English AIR test. As an eighth grader, you are required to take both the Math and English AIR test as well as the Science AIR test. Even in ninth grade, students are required to take all subject AIR tests. Essentially, state tests are not going away anytime soon. Besides being time consuming, the state tests also have had a decline in test scores due to switching to taking them on computers.

Education Week, a blog for important issues that occur in education announces, “States across the country are reporting lower test scores for kids taking state tests with computers than those that took them on paper, but Ohio is not looking for any difference. States are reporting significant differences in scores, depending on how kids took them.” The article continues to go into detail about how wealth in school systems also play a key role in the computerized state test. “Young kids or poor kids without computers at home would struggle taking tests online, just because they don’t have much practice working online.”

Something that the state should take into consideration is that some students try to be the most prepared for things that are very influential to their education. So if the state test continues, maybe they should try to make it more fair to get good scores, like giving teachers material ahead of time to correctly teach their students in a way they know they can learn. They can also give state testing in small doses, such as midterms and exams in high school (at the end of each semester).

In conclusion, if students should be required to take state testing, then each state should at least work on improvements to make the testing go more smoothly for their students and educators.