In the history of our broken educational system, Americans have bravely conquered a hundred issues – from PTA reforms to student safety to allowing teens who can’t even spell “graduation” into their dream colleges.

But for 99 of our successes, one concern has stayed constant: standardized testing.
Only one less requirement would bring our system back to its 100%. Ban standardized testing.

I can’t remember a time when I haven’t wanted to walk through Yale’s gates. And so, at the peak of the standardized testing controversy this February, I experienced my first real heartbreak.
Scrolling through the news, my world came crashing down when I read that Yale would be requiring test score submissions for their incoming applicants of the class of 2025.

Pre-pandemic, thousands of colleges across the nation had already gone test-optional, recognizing their inherent bias. Post-pandemic, hundreds more followed suit. But it’s not enough – colleges need to stop requiring them for admission and outright ban standardized testing.

This fall, like thousands of other high schoolers around the nation, I was faced with the incredible privilege of taking the PSATs. I had finished Section 1 quite early and couldn’t help but take a small snooze, promising to wake up before the next quarter of the exam.
(I ended up oversleeping and missing half the section, but) in my wondrous 15 minutes of power nap/daydream time, I got to thinking: How could my entire life be reduced into four digits that would determine my success? How many of the girls around me had studied for years to lead up to this point? How many were paying insane preparatory fees to score the perfect 1520?
How many would be denied the next step in their education simply because they couldn’t afford to catch up to their immensely privileged peers?

These past few years, two words have been thrown around in the media as if they were graduation caps: standardized testing. And yet, it seems that both critics and supporters have tried to disregard half of it.
Let’s re-center this debate – “standardized testing” literally has the word “standardized.” But, what does this astute observation mean?

Flip open a dictionary.
Standard: a norm established by authoritative custom to measure value or quality.

Now flip open the news.
Every statistic has actively proven that our “measurement of quality” in the status quo, e.g., the ACT or SAT, just aren’t “fairly established.”

A 2020 study found that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants created these tests in the early 1900s as a way to “sort new arrivals.” Unfortunately, when looking around at our reality, it seems like their original ideal of discrimination has succeeded.

And it’s not just the SAT – the National Education Association quantifies that the LSAT, MCAT and ACT have solely benefited white constituents. The New York Times wrote in January that the average test scores for middle-class, Black or Hispanic students average 106 points lower than their upper-class counterparts, as the tests discriminate by both race and class.

This is because ‘standard’ never works, especially when the standard is corrupt at its very core. I mean, if admissions relied solely on SAT scores, colleges would mirror the segregational society we’re trying to fix in real life.

We can’t continue to allow a simple test score to push us into a past that forces discrimination onto the people who need us to break that cycle.

But banning the SAT seems like quite a drastic measure; discussions and propositions have inspired fear. Let me decrease this stigma and explain why an outright ban won’t hurt students.

If I could condense every research article I’ve looked at into one word, it would be equality – and I agree; both critics and supporters want what’s most fair for our students.

But standardized tests are systemically unfair. Here’s the admissions-level benefit we need to explain: Once we ban testing, we promote more equality because we allow admissions officers to stop measuring a student’s worth with a four-digit number that can be bought and start focusing on life stories from essays, recommendations that attest to character and extracurriculars that tell what a number can’t.

That’s more equal than a biased machine-graded exam.

Jennifer Lawrence, Charles Darwin, Rihanna, Sir Isaac Newton, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Jordan – that’s 99 letters to remind you that you don’t need to take the SAT to leave a legacy.
I’m only asking for one simple ban to stitch tomorrow’s system back to 100%.