Test anxiety as a reason for not passing? Please. While most people probably don’t want to take a standardized test, I hardly think a high school senior can claim test anxiety as a reason they fail. Gee, if you have test anxiety for a minimum competency high school exam, how do you think you’ll do in college?
I don’t believe any students should be given an exemption from passing a state mandated exam. *Test anxiety * or not.
Life, unfortunately, is a series of tests. One does wonder what people who cannot pass a high school exit exam, which I remember as being the sort of thing where you pass for spelling your name right, do in a job interview? In an interaction with a problem customer? In a high-pressure deadline situation?
They’re not quite that easy these days and there are for example in MD a series of tests in various subjects.
My son is one who doesn’t test well and he’s passed one out of three so far. I’m very concerned about this, how can you get an A in a subject yet not pass one test and be denied a diploma?
None of which situations remotely resemble the standardized test taking environment in school in the least? I’m sure there are many very tough, smart, capable people who have accomplished and endured a lot but who don’t do well on standardized tests. The idea that it’s some kind of measurement of character or intelligence is absurd.
I got an A in a class this semester, a class in which I went into the classroom for the first test and absolutely choked (a whopping 65%, bottom of the class). That never happens to me, but it did this time. Why? I had a lot going on, this, that, whatever, it doesn’t matter. The reality is that people have varying reasons why they do poorly on tests. Now, add to that the fact that your entire future hinges on the results of a single test, and it’s easy to see how someone could simply choke up and forget everything.
Don’t get me wrong here, I too think that the competency tests are ludicrously easy, but I am not in the shoes of the student taking the test, and I won’t dismiss the possibility that the student simply choked when the chips were down. It happens to everybody from time to time, only it’s usually when it’s not so important.
Oh, you have no idea how pissed off I am by this grade augmentation crap, that was supposed to be over and done with. Kids have FIVE chances to take the AIMS test. It’s been something they’ve known about for about a decade – AIMS is a big, big deal here in Arizona. The test is designed so sophomores can pass it, and we have a senior with a 3.2 GPA failing math five times? Something’s messed up, but I really have to say, if a kid can’t pass the extremely simple multiple choice test that they’ve been prepping for since the third grade, symptoms would have shown up prior to taking the damn test.
If they don’t “test well,” then that’s a failing on their part. I don’t like that kind of whining either. I certainly have no sympathy for their “anxiety.” You either know the stuff or you don’t. If you know it, then what is there to be anxious about? I’m also not buying that it’s not a measure of intelligence or that you can be smart and still do poorly on tests. Baloney. I never knew a smart person who couldn’t do well on tests.
I don’t like the way kids are coddled these days and the way parents twist themselves into pretzels making excuses for them. They’re not all geniuses. Most of them are just average. Some of them are actually stupid. deal with it.
Personally, I always liked tests. I found them fun and challenging and I enjoyed wiping the floor with the rest of the class. I never even studied or took notes. Sometimes it’s fun to be a certified “genius.”
I can understand a student choking (I did it myself once or twice), but the idea that text anxiety alone can make a student fail a standardized test is just not realistic.
I remember for the NY state standardized tests I took, they were set up so that if you knew your shit you’d at least be able to pass with a minimum grade. Not everybody is going to get an A, that’s life. But if you fail a standardized test, you don’t know everything you’re supposed to know, it’s that simple.
I understand your concern over your son, but at the same time, it seems to me that grade inflation is becoming a problem. In other words, students are being given better grades than they deserve.
While I have certainly seen intelligent kids bomb tests, it’s incredibly rare (I personally can’t think of a single example in over a decade of teaching AP) of a regularly A or B student unable to take tests. That student simply wouldn’t be an A or B student. I’m not saying it’s outside the realm of possibility, but when a smart kid tanks a test, the vast majority of the time it’s because he or she wasn’t prepared.
I’ve had anxiety over a standardized test exactly once. It was the GMAT, and I wasn’t at all comfortable with one section, and I did crappy. I went back to the books and hammered on that section, retook the test, and smoked it.
The deal here is that these tests are written by bored drones following the same templates year after year after year. If you get the templates down, you will do well on the test. They prove very little except that you know how to take the test, but I have been able to use that to my considerable advantage, as the world is awash in people thinking that the tests have more validity than they, in fact, have.
So I guess my point is that taking standardized tests is a learnable skill that pays dividends because of people’s inate laziness. If you learn the template, there’s no reason for anxiety. Go forth and learn.
It seems wrong to me that anyone who otherwise passes all their classes but doesn’t pass a standardized test should be denied a high school diploma. What would be the point of adding that burden to a young person’s life?
Anyone who can pass all their classes should not find it to be a burden, and there has to be some way to evalutae accumulated knowledge. I don’t think anyone who can’t pass the standardized test (which isn’t that hard) deserves a high school diploma. Curricula have been so dumbed down over the last couple of decades that I don’t trust the regular grades anymore. I tutored too many subliterate undergrads with high school degrees to have any faith in the normal curricula.