While many colleges seem to deeply value results of standardized test scores, the truth is that tests like the SAT, ACT or other standardized tests simply provide generalized, surface level accounts of students’ intelligence while ignoring creative thinking, real-life problem solving skills and pretty much any other piece of humanity that dictates knowledge.

Forcing schools to sacrifice valuable class time for standardized tests further takes away from students’ education. Moreover, trying to determine the intelligence of a student based on their performance in a high-stakes testing environment is detrimental to students’ access to the education that they need.
“Such tests reward quick answers to superficial questions,” the National Center for Fair and Open Testing said. “They do not measure the ability to think deeply or creatively in any field. Their use encourages a narrowed curriculum, outdated methods of instruction, and harmful practices such as grade retention and tracking.”
Standardized tests teach students to value memorization over understanding, and narrow mindsets rather than creativity. These tests group students into unfair sects of education and do little to nothing to truly help teachers understand where their kids are developmentally.
Conversely, many believe that standardized tests provide educators with quick and comprehensive understanding of how to best focus their students. However, no matter how “consistent” the information provided by these tests may seem, the truth of the matter is that they still generalize information about students and do not create well-rounded data collection, as standardized tests ignore every other aspect of a student’s intelligence.
Overall, standardized tests may, on a surface level, seemingly provide important data on students’ education. In reality, these tests hinder student experience as it forces educators to place their students into unfair groups based on a static measure of intelligence.