Standardized Tests Overlook Too Much
Do not account for daily struggles of mostly immigrant youth
By Loan Kim Ly

Mary* is seventeen years old. She has many friends, dates a steady boyfriend, enjoys listening to music and loves playing the piano. It’s easy to see how things tend to pile up for her.

Every morning Mary gets up at 6:30 a.m., wakes up her two younger brothers who always refuse to get up, and proceeds to the bathroom. There, she begins her daily routine of getting ready and yelling at her brothers.

At first glance, Mary seems like a typical teenager. But judging from the dark circles under her eyes that dominate her face, she’s definitely tired and it shows.

Most teenagers’ moms aren’t a gamblers and don’t work from six in the morning until late at night.

And most teenagers, unlike Mary, get to see their dad more than twice a month. And most teenagers don’t have to be her sibling’s primary caretaker either.

Yesterday, Mary lied to her favorite teacher about being sick so that she could get an extension for an essay on Catcher in the Rye. But the truth was that she had to work overtime because her family was a little short this month -- her mom makes too much to qualify for welfare, but not enough to live comfortably in this city and support a gambling problem.

For the past month Mary’s been working almost 30 hours a week, going to school, taking flak from her teachers for either missing homework or being tardy, and stressing over financial aid papers and scholarships for college.

At about 7 o’clock, Mary is just about to leave the one-bedroom apartment when she sees her brothers still asleep on their bunk bed in their living room. Shaking her head, Mary slams the door, praying that she can squeeze another extension out of her teacher.

Sam* came to America a few years ago. Having just transferred from Newcomer High School -- a school for new immigrant students -- he doesn’t have many friends except for those whom he met during summer school.

Like most teenagers, Sam thinks school is a drag. But with his mom’s constant reminders to do well in school in order to get a good job, and his dad’s repetitive lectures about having it so much better than kids back in the old country, school has become much more appealing. Though learning English is hard, and classes are long, Sam is still proud that he has a chance to experience American life.

Last week, the state presented an audit of how the well Bay Area schools fared based on students’ performance on the standardized Stanford 9 exams. This is the second year the test has been administered in California schools, and the first year those rankings were calculated.

Society has made it so that the ability to ace standardized tests is a life-skill, but it seems almost futile to put so much emphasis on them since colleges tend to be moving further away from them. Moreover, ranking schools simply based on a standardized test that is optional is not an accurate measure of students’ performance because many factors are overlooked.

For example, my own high school, Galileo High, has students coming from various backgrounds -- not to mention countries. There are approximately 50 different languages spoken at there, and this year we even have a student who speaks Bulgarian. At some point in time, most people have attempted to learn a foreign language. Was it easy?

Now imagine having to take a test in that language. How could one understand so many questions in a foreign language?

We were given a score of 3 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being highest. Based on these statistics alone, Galileo Academy appears to be an academically challenged school.

But statistics like those tend to hide all the Marys and Sams who are all too common at Galileo.

*The names of the subjects in this column have been changed to protect their identities.