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Nabeel Ali
Professor Malcolm Campbell
UWRT 1103
10 November 2016
Students Motivation & Curiosity vs Grades & Standardized Tests
Over the past years, Education has been changing drastically to benefit students, but is it
helping them? Education plays a huge part in many peoples lives today and tends to shape the
future of many students or millennials. Whether it can be finding a job, pursuing a passion, or
even building your company depending on your own desires. As I recall the years through
middle school, as the school year went by, I couldnt stand going to school because each day
would get closer to the final standardized test or as the state called it EOG (End of Grade Test),
and we get kept focusing on math and reading which became very repetitive and boring. Also
through high school, the main goal was maintaining a high GPA to outrank other students and
striving to outscore our classmates to look better in the eyes of admission officers and
employers. From my experiences, I wanted to see how the educational system was like overall in
the US, the perspective of other educators and how it is affecting students, and how the
curriculum for schools have been changing. Turns out the US educational system is not what it
seems to be: an educational system where students can strive to chase their passions and learn a
variety of things. Some of the major aspects to how the US education system has changed over
the years range from the focus on standardized tests by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), to
relying on grades for evaluation, and narrowing down school curriculums to focus on the
standardized tests.

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United States educational system has been changing ever since the No Child Left Behind
Act (NCLB) was signed into law on January 8, 2002. The law is uniformly blamed for stripping
curriculum opportunities, including art, music, physical education and more, and imposing a
brutal testing regime that has forced educators to focus their time and energy on preparing for
tests in a narrow range of subjects (Walker). It has been more than a decade and the focus on
standardized testing has increased more than ever leading to students losing educational
opportunities to purse their passions and forces schools to change their curriculums, and forcing
teachers to narrow down what they teach to their students in a certain time frame before the day
of the test. The act of starting these repetitive tests early in a students education is leading to a
loss of curiosity. Further on, the increase in standardized testing is leading to the curriculum in
schools becoming much narrower. A narrower curriculum means kicking out subjects such as
visual arts, world languages, social studies, and science making students confine under learning
basic subjects such as math and English making them less open minded. With standardized tests,
there is also a focus on using grades as an important way for evaluation. According to Anthony
Docan, grades work to decrease intrinsic motivation and may distract from the learning process
and focus attention on the final resultthat of getting a grade (Saulat). This what drives students
to think assignments as chores rather than a good way to practice something new to learn more.
In todays US, educational system, it is pretty bland. Students are set to the same
standards: getting good grades to define their GPA and set their class rank. The high school and
college grading system is counterproductive because it uses numbers as incentives, dwarfing the
incentive of genuine curiosity (Saulat). When students start to focus on the final grade, they
tend to not care about learning rather they would do anything to get an A on the assignment. It is
like these grades are literally stressing students out of their curiosity. Pauline Hawkins, who is an

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English teacher at a community college says that in a world filled with radiant colors, the
students remain black and white; their canvases stripped of all personalization. What Pauline is
trying to say is that, this strict focus on grading and standardized testing is surrounding students
to become less open-minded, as they are not as open to the variety of knowledge and possibilities
around themselves. According to Faiz Saulat, who is a current college student with a pre-med
intent says that performance in classes and exams define cumulative GPA and class rank, the
basic measures of the academic system. This is probably the most basic component on how the
educational system in the US works. Students arent going to class because they are curious to
learn new topics each day rather they go to class because theyre grade depends on it and that
they either just want to pass the class or raise their GPA up. Therefore, students are losing the
motivation to learn new knowledge rather they are looking at learning as quantitative data.
Shelley Wright, a former teacher says that, Ive come to realize that being academic doesnt tell
you much about yourself. It tells you youre good at school (Wright). These students and
teachers are helping by showing their perspective on how they have seen how our education
system works, by seeing the problems, they can come together to find solutions. What comes to
my mind is that since using grades has been around in the school systems for many years, how
can we find a permanent change to where others could agree upon? While grades are focused on
to evaluate students, standardized testing is being used to point out the best students and show
which schools are succeeding by looking at their average scores.
As previously stated above, standardized testing started when the No Child Left Behind
Act was passed. NCLB was originally implemented to provide resources to low income students
in struggling schools but now it is about teaching to pass the test. Some examples of standardized
testing include, Common Core State Testing, SAT, AP exams, WorkKeys and many more for

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different levels of education. Any of these tests have changed the way that the curriculums work
in schools today. Danny Keener, a English teacher at Santa Ana College and Chaffey College
says that, since so much emphasis is placed on standardized tests, for teachers and students
alike, a good portion of the school year is dedicated to it. This means instead of using innovative,
creative, fun, energetic means of educating students, teachers are compelled to teach the test
(Keener). This is true, as standardized testing has narrowed the curriculums in schools
drastically. Schools were meant to be a place where people could go to explore a variety of
things and find their passions and now theyre beginning to be test prep centers. Art teacher
Ginger Rose Fox says she has witnessed the way critical subjects have been crowded out of
schools or even eliminated entirely by the lethal one-two punch of deep budget cuts and the
singular focus on improving reading and math (Walker). If there is only math and reading left in
schools, what is there to learn, rather there would be no point in going to school to learn two
subjects. Without any learning opportunities, students in elementary schools cant develop the
skills that will help them with the transition to the next grade level, same with students in high
school. The National Education Association (NEA) has made a campaign to end the rigorous
testing in schools and bring back the education to open students minds to any possibilities and
bring back the exploration that a student needs to stay curious. The most meaningful and
impactful experiences are rooted in our own natural curiosity-a personal, passionate yearning to
find out what, why, how something works or could be better. Throw in a little trial and error so
that we can actually learn from our mistakes. Those are the meaningful experiences that shape
our growth and contribute to the development of our cognitive backpacks (Hughes). This quote
is a good representation of what schools should be like to encourage motivation and curiosity.

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The voices of students, teachers, parents, etc. Standardized testing has affected thousands of
students over the US, is it too late for students to regain interest in school and show motivation?
While many oppose standardized testing and grades, some encourage it because
standardized tests results have exposed glaring racial biases in our education system,
standardized exams are designed to be objective measures, they assess students based on a
similar set of questions and are graded by a machine or blind reviewer, and remain an important
part of holding schools accountable (Is). Even if the test has similar questions, it all comes
down to whether a student could memorize the information. Holding schools accountable for test
scores and firing teachers is not good for the children/students and stress from over testing is
taking away the love of learning. Both sides would agree that standardized testing helped with
finding any racial biases in the education system.
Hearing the perspectives of the students and teachers was interesting to read since they
had experience themselves how the education system is. Education in the US is complex, so it
might take some time to improve things for current and future students. Now what is left to
explore, is the solutions we can find to solve these complexities in our education system.

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Works Cited
Hawkins, Pauline. The Faults in Our Education System: A Students Perspective.
WordPress.com. N.p., 25 Apr. 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.
Hughes, Melissa. Is Education Killing Curiosity? Linked in. N.p., 26 Sept, 2014. Web. 17 Oct.
2016.
Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America? ProCon.org. ProCon.org,
28 May 2008. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
Keener, Danny. Why is the Current Education System is Failing Future Generations: A Note
from a Teacher. Policy.Mic. N.p., 18 June 2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.
Saulat, Faiz. The Education Factory: How the U.S. Education System is Killing Creativity.
GPR. Georgia Political Review, 27 Dec. 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.
Walker, Tim. The Testing Obsession and the Disappearing Curriculum. NEA TODAY. National
Education Association, 2 Sept. 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.
Wright, Shelley. Why Academic Teaching Doesnt Help Kids Excel in Life. MindShift. KQED
Inc, 14 Nov. 2013. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.