I believe standardized testing is ruining America’s education system and needs to be done away with so Americans can once again be world leaders.

The benefits and pitfalls of standardized tests have been widely discussed and debated, but little action has occurred; therefore I believe we need to get rid of testing and focus on observation as the dominant way of measuring learning.

As an experienced tutor, the biggest area kids struggle in is testing, regardless of age, ethnicity or socioeconomic background. That is because testing is unnatural. It juxtaposes the natural processes that occur when we learn in and out of the classroom.

Because most of our knowledge comes naturally, and therefore is best implemented in a natural way, testing reverses that process and makes the test taker try to spit out everything they are supposed to have learned, all at once. Testing is so unnatural for school kids, a new diagnosable and medically treated mental illness has come of it called test anxiety.

Lev Vygotsky, widely noted for his thoughts and studies about observation verses testing, also noted that kids learn best when they can collaborate with their peers and adults. Standardized testing places so much of academic learning and performance on the individual and his or her private experiences that you are now hard-pressed to find such “collaboration classroom” designs in any school today.

If our system does not change soon, we will fail our kids and our future generations of potential world leaders. If the government school systems won’t listen and won’t change, then I believe our next solution should be to privatize the school system to get what we want.

Samantha Spigelman is a Valencia resident.