anyway, no to this proposition. I spend enough time at school already with three-hour marching band rehearsals.
Ah, yes, but if school is longer, then you'll have three-hour long marching band class, hence shorter (if any) rehearsals!
And because I'm in High School now, I'm allowed to argue with this:
eliminate the state-regulated tests.
They do not affect your grades. Preparing for the test takes up time which could be spent, uh, you know, learning actual math/ELA. Instead, you get bombarded with pointlessly retaking old tests and doing example questions.
If instead, there was a test at the end of the year (say, early June) that recapped what you learned, you'd have spent much less time on test prep, and could actually focus on learning.
I'm all for school beginning later, so long as you get more days off.
--Make the school day begin later
--Eliminate standardized tests
--Get more days off
Getting rid of standardized testing would be all good and dandy on the first look. However, it'll pose some problems...
One, by getting rid of standardized test scores, colleges and universities will have no standardized basis to compare applying students. Yes, there are other things they can be based on, like GPAs and extracurricular activities. However, there are several flaws in basing college admission on those alone. GPAs vary widely across schools -- different schools have different standards, and the grades vary with teachers as well. It'll be quite unfair to a smart student who got a B in a very tough school when he/she would have easily gotten an A in another school. Extracurricular activities vary with geography. A student interested in, say, environmental sciences may live in the middle of a huge city, making finding activities related to his or her interest hard. Even if said student manages to find an activity, he or she may not be able to go because of transportation problems and such. Standardized testing gives colleges and universities something they can compare students with.
Also, standardized testing forces students to study. Even if they're not graded, students still must study and learn whatever they're getting tested on in order to get a good score. Even if the information will be forgotten very soon later, that argument could be applied to everything else (ex. you'll forget how to play piano if you don't play it for 5 years).
I am aware that the current standardized tests are... let's just put it mildly and say "fail horribly." The SAT, for example, has been shown to only test how well the student takes tests, not how much the student knows or can learn. It's also super long, not beneficial to poor students who can't pay the test fees, and etc. However, if a good standardized test can be made that actually tests the student's ability to reason and learn as well as the student's knowledge, it would be quite beneficial and useful.
I must say that the current standardized tests are flawed in more ways than I can count. However, if these problems are fixed, standardized testing can actually be beneficial.
tl;dr: Standardized testing is fail because it's not testing the right things. However, if it is, then it's good stuff.
I have no idea why I just wrote several huge paragraphs on standardized testing instead of doing homework.
