ool I remember so many other things besides
             testing and preparing for these tests. The activities that I remember are
             playing math games, creating art of the artists that we were learning about
             and doing science experiments that helped us remember what was discussed in
             our lesson. I only remember there being a few days maybe a week or two
             where we would take the time out of our schedule to prepare for the state
             testing. It never seemed as if it was a big deal to the teachers and was
             just something that we did every year at the end of the year. It seems as
             if teachers are required to spend too much time working on this and it
             takes away from the actually lessons that they should be teaching. After
             reading from the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, I was able to
             find some reasons as to how and why these tests are affecting education and
             children's drive to learn in school. The first things that they explained
             were the reasons that standardized tests are used in schools. Some of the
             reasons were aside from the biases, inaccuracies and other flaws, schools
             use these tests to determine if children are on track, if they have
             learning disabilities, or need to be held back a grade. The idea that
             caught my attention the most was the phrase "teaching to the test". When a
             teacher is focused on teaching the format of a test and preparing students
             to take a multiple choice test for example, the students are not
             necessarily learning or improving in their real academic performance. Some
             people would ask "Don't standardized tests provide accountability?" and the
             answer to that question from some people would be, no. In my opinion
             students should be tested on more than whether or not they can answer a
             multiple question correctly. In many ways these pressures to "teach to the
             test" mess with and narrows education as a whole. Not only does this
             concept narrow education, but it is causes school ...