The Monster: School Tests Everyone has their fears, some don't like heights, the dark and others just being in a crowd or giving a speech. One thing, however, that many students fear is tests. Taking the test after each chapter is normal and many students can pass if they understand the topic and are taught well. There is one test, however, that many, especially younger children, see as a monster. This monster is the standardized test, a monster that must be slain. Anyone who has taken standardized tests notices a pattern. There are questions, on standardized tests, that are simple for the test level that everyone would know, there are questions below that grade level, and there are questions that you have to guess at because it's something above your knowledge level . However, most of the time these questions are irrelevant to what you are learning in those lessons. How can you learn or see how much of what you are actually learning when you are constantly taking standardized tests. These standardized tests are not administered by our schools, but by the federal government. The intent that must be remembered with standardized tests is that they serve to evaluate the general level of our countries in certain areas. The test overall serves many purposes. Basically, tests allow teachers, professors, and other educators to see how well their students have grasped the knowledge they have been imparted. This in turn allows students to see how well they have grasped the knowledge and what areas they need to work on. If the student does poorly, the student's teacher or parents may need to help the student concentrate more. Aside from seeing how well a student may have understood a topic... halfway through the paper...United States. “After the passage of NCLB in 2002, the United States slipped from 18th in the world in mathematics…to 31st in 2009, with a similar decline in science and no change in reading” (Anderson). Parents give up on their children and rightly so. The amount of testing is ruining the rest of their education and will ultimately ruin our economy, our future, many don't realize it and if standardized testing isn't changed it will destroy our country. The evidence was evident in a National Research Council report which states that incentive tests work as they should (CITBA), so students are increasingly stressed by this and see the tests as a joke. Teachers are unable to teach their students the information they should learn because they are constantly preparing for standardized tests. The monster must be killed.