Why Do Students Need Low Test Scores?

The clock on the opposite wall must have been broken; its second hand seemed to take longer and longer between each tick. Any minute now the test proctor would poke her head out the classroom door to call us back to those desks and the ITEDs (Iowa Tests of Educational Development). I would have liked to tell myself that I was not worried, that I did not care about my scores anymore, but my sweaty palms and nervous glances toward the testing room door prevented me from believing that lie. Looking around, I saw hollow eyes, staring into nothingness, pretending to read the announcements on the walls, or watching the clock tick, tick, tick on its unnaturally slow crawl. Some people in the hall talked nervously, but it only added to the tension already in the air. It felt like …show more content…
Many students are pressured by teachers worried about their salaries to do well on tests, and the stress is enormous, puking level enormous. If they score badly, students may be placed in special needs classes or kicked out of advanced classes like this eighth grade girl who confronted her school board about the impact of her low scores on the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test): “Every year I do good in school, but I get low test scores on the FCAT and it feels like a punch in the stomach... This is unfair and I don’t want to lose my opportunity to take my advanced classes or get better education because of one test.” (LastWeekTonight). That by itself sounds horrible, but she also made a good point: one cannot accurately test the academic ability of each individual student with only one, standard test. Doing so would not account for other variables which could account for lower scores, what if the student forgot to eat breakfast that day, or she had high stress levels, or maybe she is just a bad test