No More Standardized Testing

My Experiences with Standardized Testing

February 6, 2013

This blog will be about my experience with Standardized Testing. I am very familiar with standardized tests. I took my first one in elementary school. My first test dealt with English, math, reading, science, and social studies. When I got into middle school, these tests started to decrease, but they got tougher. I still needed to take math, reading, and science. By the time I got into high school, I still needed to take the math part of the standardized tests. But, when I got into the ACT part of these standardized tests, I needed to take English, math, reading, science, and if I want to, I got the choice if I want to take the writing part. The requirements would be very stressful, that it made me tired, and sometimes gave me a headache. When it came to me taking the ACT on my junior and senior year, I needed to go on a computer a lot just to study, and the test would be on a Saturday. Another thing that stressed me about the tests would be on how many minutes I had to answer as many questions as I can in a specific amount of time. The test took around 4-4 ½ hours. For the English part of the test, I needed to answer 75 questions in 45 minutes. The math would be 60 questions in 60 minutes. The reading part would be 40 questions in 35 minutes. The science part would be 35 questions in 45 minutes. Finally, the writing part would be a 30 minute essay. I wouldn’t expect to get the test done quickly. The requirements that I had to do when I took the test would be so stressful, that when I first took the test on my junior year, I got a 14 on it. So, I decided to retake it on my senior year. When I took it again, I increased my score to a 17 on the same standardized test.

My Opinion of the Project

February 19, 2013

I will now talk about my opinion of this whole research project. I enjoyed the project. This project showed me how to create a website. When I did the project, it also helped me develop my opinions about standardized testing. When I first did the project, I did not know how to make a works cited page. The things that I found difficult included researching for the right topics for the project. In the library, there were a lot of books I could have used for the project. I would also be able to go to other websites to research on other facts. If I didn’t cite the information I took from my sources, then I would be plagiarizing the author for using their information. I also found it difficult to cite the sources. I needed to cite sources by going through the step-by-step process without using easybib.com. I also needed to put the author’s last name after the sentence that I copied. So in conclusion, I really liked doing this project. I liked this because I wanted to learn how to create a website. It helped me learn how to create a website in case if I have to do this in college. It will also help me pass my college English classes next year and in years to come. I also liked this because it also let me tell you about the ACT and SAT, and the reasons why colleges shouldn’t need us to take these standardized tests, and just look at our GPAs.

Write It Down

February 27, 3013

My name is Cortney Laughlin. My partner and I have been working on a research paper and a website over standardized testing for our English class. So far we have completed our work cited page, our rough draft, and we finished our final draft just yesterday. Today is the day our first blog is due. I’m not sure what’s supposed to go on a blog since this is the first time I have written a blog for a website, but I think I can figure out what goes on a blog. Tomorrow we begin working on our websites. I am looking forward to creating a website because I have not done this before. We have a topic that will be fun to create a website over. Our topic is something that we are familiar with since we have taken these tests since elementary school, and most colleges require them for college admissions. I know that when it comes time to testing I don’t look forward to it, but at least in grade school they gave you snacks during the tests. It’s been four weeks since we chose our topics for this project. After a lot of research it has taken a while to find reliable sources to support our main ideas. The first place we started our research at was the library. We found a couple good books that we could use for our paper. One of the books was even titled Standardized Testing; it was the best book out of all of them. Well I need to get back to my project, because it’s due in less than two weeks. Blog you next time!

Pencils Down!March 12, 2013

It’s Cortney again posting another blog. Only a couple more days till this project is due. I’m just adding the pictures to our website today. I have had my ups and downs with this website, but for the most part it has been fun. The things that I have had the most problems with would be transferring text from Microsoft Word to this website, and adding pictures had been difficult. If you asked me if I would want to make another website on yola, I would tell you no. The worst thing was not being able to add more than three pages to the website. Almost everything on yola you had to pay for. I have learned a lot about standardized testing during this project. I have learned that there are a lot of mixed opinions out there about whether we should or shouldn’t have standardized testing. My partner and I are on the side of not have standardized testing. When I was researching I discovered that the cost of standardized tests is tremendous. I found that standardized tests tend to be unfair and discriminating. During this project I learned how a works cited page should look. From now on books are going to be the first thing I go to when researching, rather than the internet, because they seem the most reliable. Overall I have become a better researcher because of the projects. I’m sure there will be many more research papers in my future. This is my last blog for this project, so I won’t be posting another blog, but have fun viewing the website.

Pencil image: isox4, July 28, 2010 via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.