Most people in school can say they have crammed for a test or prioritized one test over the other. The amount of anxiety coming from just one test is extremely high, but imagine having multiple all crammed in one day. Being prepared for college and the outside world is needed, but why should students at a young age be introduced into the beginning of what could become something more serious down the road? 

School has changed in both good and bad ways, in my opinion. Technology has made life easier while going through a pandemic. Yet, there is now immense pressure to get amazing grades to, hopefully, get accepted into a college. The American Psychological Association ran a survey with both teens and adults about the stress in their life. The survey said that while some teens stress may decrease, others say their stress levels increase each school year. Some stress can be caused by an overwhelming amount of tests in one day.

“I think some test taking is appropriate, but having multiple in each class every week can be very stressful and take away from learning,” junior Carson Brindle said.

With tests comes the worry of if your grade will change drastically. In my opinion, I think grades act as a label. Schools look highly on kids who do well in school and look down on kids who don’t do as well as others. Basing how we look and treat a student solely on grades is wrong. While some see grades as a problem, others see grades as what a student has accomplished.

“What grades should signify is the level of achievement/competency in a certain subject,” English teacher Kyle Brasher said.

Tests are an important part when it comes to jobs or achieving something important to that person. If we’re talking about tests when learning something new, I think there is a piece missing. Some say that test scores see how well a student has learned that topic. Most tests you can’t retake, so what is the reasoning behind if a student understands the homework but fails the test? Every student is different when it comes to thinking and putting a mold on how a student should think makes individuality difficult. 

Every school system has flaws and not everyone is going to be happy with every decision made. I think that health, ways of learning, and individuality are important in school and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Making sure every student succeeds in both big and small is a good place to start when it comes to priorities.