The Problems With Standardized Testing In Schools

According to a study conducted in 2001, the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-after-year test score improvement were temporary and were “caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning” (Procon Headlines).Standardized testing has been a hot topic in the educational field since its began in the early 1900s. Many parents, teachers and students agree that standardized testing is not a reliable source for seeing students performance. So what can we do? As a student in high school I propose changing the tests to form to the ever-changing society and adult world that they are trying to prepare us for. It's clear that standardized testing will not go away overnight, why not seek to improve them?
The word, may, is purposeful, because this fault goes hand and hand with another. Teachers are not prepared well enough in order to prepare their students. From my own experience, I have heard teachers saying year after year “I don't know what's going to be on the test at the end of the year, so we’ll do this from last years test”. How can someone prepare properly for something they do not know? Back to the issue of time, students are often required to learn a year and a halfs worth of concepts in a year. This mostly happens in subjects like science and math, crucial subjects for our generation. By the time the standardized test comes around, students have already forgot the full year's worth of concepts they learned last semester. These two issues also help in making standardized tests
I propose to have the standardized tests changed to test for what truly matters - common sense and critical thinking. Maybe a way to ‘test’ for critical thinking would be by giving each individual a situation and having them write out how they would handle it. Maybe for math and science the focus could be on teaching the children to understand the topics instead of learning-to-pass then forgetting the material. Maybe a simple change could make a huge