Standardized Testing

    While in high school I remember hearing a conversation between my humanities teacher and the principal. It was about one of my friends who was a senior at the time, and it was a discussion of whether or not my humanities teacher should pass him or not. My friend had failed several classes and ended up taking most of those classes online and all he needed was the humanities class to get his diploma. The discussion was basically our principal telling our teacher to pass my friend so that they can get rid of him instead of having him come back next year since they said they didn't want to deal with him anymore. The teacher I talked about earlier quit the following year because several students were passed through the same way and he was given little respect from the students and his peers. My friend was failing the class and did none of his work, so in no way did he deserve to pass this class, but if he graduates the school gets more funding for the following year.
   High schools will do anything to ensure that they get the same funds then next year, which is what I had been noticing in my years in high school. They introduce several classes and programs to get more funding and will make sure that no one fails by issuing standardized testing to everyone. Firstly the reason why this happened is because of no child left behind, which mandated that everyone must take the same standardized tests and that you must teach the exact material provided without straying from a set of guidelines. Which makes teaching into a cookie cutting process and doesn't accommodate for the needs of that particular class. The material taught must be memorized and little critical thinking skills are required to pass any standardized test.I believe that this leads to a society that is uneducated in the skills that are needed to succeed in life and is shown in most of the United States.
   One problem that must be fixed is having more diverse topics to study through high school and having more choices. Not just having everyone read the same book and write the same papers. Also topics that you learn in class should be tested, but not just with standardized testing. There needs to be more group discussions and activities that reflect on what you learned and gets students to come to some conclusions on their own. Our education system kills creativity by telling you that you are constantly wrong and that there are wrong opinions, at least in my schooling. Hopefully we can get to a place where students can find out what they are good at and be pushed out of their comfort zone.