My Attitude Towards the Cst

My Attitude Towards the CST

The CST is the test that tells the schools how much you have learned in the past few years or so. Many teachers have told me that it does not affect us. Knowing that, I didn't really care for taking the test. I didn't even read half the questions nor the answers.

Being told the CST doesn't affect us is a lie. It however, affects us indirectly. The score on the test shows how well the school is doing but if one of every five students gets a really low score, it affects the over all score of all of them. Same thing goes for the rest of the students. Lets say the ratio is 4:1, four that have a good score and one that has a really low score. That really low score affects the good ones and brings their over all percent down a lot.

Teachers have said try your best but its ok if you don't do well. What they should really be telling the students is do your best and you will pass with ease. Possibly not passing the students that score low should be told they wont graduate; only then would they be a little more compelled to try harder. News of not letting students graduate would anger parents but it would also get some parents to be more encouraging towards getting their children to do well on these tests.

The school depends on these scores for its credibility. If the district notices that the students don't keep up with other schools in the district they will have to do something about what to with the school. Would they get rid of the teachers or sell the school to a private school district? If the school would lose its credit, the seniors wouldn't be able to get their diploma then there would be a lot of parents asking why their children cant graduate from this school with a diploma. The school would be able to say that the students didn't do well on these tests so they lost their credit and can't give diplomas any more! First to be blamed would be the teachers but nobody would blame the students since they come to school to learn. However that is just a lie, most students come to socialize with each other.

The students will never fully take it seriously enough to completely do their best on the CST. There should be some consequences for not doing well on the test. Students need to know the real consequences of not trying.