Timed Tests? Not Actually a Bad Thing.

Mara Lindokken
16 May 2007


As someone who has recently gone through the college admissions process, including the standardized testing, I feel there is significant merit in these tests.
There is an argument to be made that the timing of them is arbitrary. Howard Gardner takes the position that everyone should be allowed to get his or her time extended in a timed test. He also states that few tasks in life require one to read passages or do math problems rapidly. Both are valid arguments, but I believe there is reason to find fault with these.
If everyone were allowed to have their time extended, who is to set the maximum amount of time they can extend it? One could say “reasonable,” but who defines reasonable? The times already in place are standard over many different tests. There is an arbitrary element to the time set (who determines what the standard time is?), but when you take away that and say, “take as much time as you need,” the number of things needing a subjective definition goes up greatly.
As to Gardner’s second qualm, it is true that those exact skills of reading passages and doing math problems rapidly are not normally used in everyday life. However, the general skill sets used by doing them are. Thing such as the ability to work quickly and work under pressure are important skills in many workplaces. Much of the standardized tests are not true knowledge tests, anyway—they test your ability to interpret data, rather than spew facts. Being able to apply general concepts in a given amount of time to a situation is, in fact, a rather important skill to have.