We all know that horrible feeling in our stomachs when we see the clock read, “one minute remaining” while taking a test. Our minds begin to race, our palms start to sweat, and everything you studied leading up to this moment has ever so conveniently slipped away. Tests that are timed don’t just measure one’s knowledge; they can amplify people’s anxiety, limit one’s accurate performance and penalize the students who are unable to process information quickly.
Most timed tests really fail to capture a student’s true understanding of the material. Instead of prioritizing and encouraging the deep thinking and creative problem-solving skills that young adults need to develop and use in their everyday lives, they reward speed and memorization instead. Students who might need a little more time to work through questions, whether it’s due to learning differences and disabilities, language barriers or simply a more contemplative thinking style, can feel unfairly disadvantaged.
“I think that time limitations for standardized testing are unfair for students who do not perform well under pressure or have undiagnosed learning disabilities,” junior Chloe Schram said.
This pressure can also lead to long-term effects on students of all types. Constantly racing against a clock seems to teach students to associate learning with constant stress and agitation rather than curiosity and personal development. Over time, this can damage confidence and reduce motivation, especially in younger students still developing their academic identities.
“When I am not 100% confident on all the content or when there are long reading passages, the timer often stresses me out. I tend to hyper fixate on the amount of time left instead of thoroughly reading the questions,” Schram said.
Many students echo the same experiences where the presence of a clock or timer obstructs their focus and true performance, especially during high-stake standardized tests like the mandatory SAT and ACT.
“One specific time that I feel like the pressure of the clock affected my performance on a test was definitely during the ACT. The ACT math section and the timed writing portions in the APUSH tests are what really stress me out. I feel like both the reading and math sections should be longer so that students are able to really demonstrate their true abilities without the stress of running out of time,” junior Brighde Mullen said.
If the goal of education is to foster and improve dynamic understanding and critical thinking skills, then we must rethink the purpose of a timer in our classrooms. After all, real-world success is very rarely measured by how fast we can complete a task but rather by how well we are able to do it.
