By Maggie Foight There are a grand total of 1,501 high schools in Pa. If we take Wilson High School as a sample school, there are roughly 2,000 students per school. For a general number, each Keystone Exam booklet -- printed and accompanied by the answer sheet booklet -- may take 45 pages. This means that for every Keystone, one for biology, one for literature and one for algebra, 90,000 pages of paper are used. This means 270,000 sheets of paper wasted on required Keystone Exams annually. These numbers are nowhere near exact, but they do represent a much larger problem weighing on the legislature of Pa. So much paper is wasted on these tests, but in the eyes of the state government, they are necessary to determine the academic level at which its students reside. As a result the legislature decided that computerizing the Keystone Exams would be the best solution for eliminating the paper waste while keeping the testing in place. However, it is evident, listening to and being one of the students affected, that the legislature did not account for the detrimental effects of such a movement. For one, how are the proctors (teachers who would, quite honestly, be spending their mornings doing anything else) supposed to monitor all of the clicks of all of the students in the room? They simply can’t. Technology has gotten to the point where it takes mere seconds to do a Google search for a question, and this helps a lot in research areas -- and for quick cheating. The videos all Pennsylvanian Keystone-taking students were forced to watch clearly spelled out that if, for whatever reason, it was necessary to pause the test, a pause button would stall the test’s timer for twenty minutes. It takes less than a minute to close the exam, sign back into one’s computer, and search for an answer, and if a teacher isn’t aware that one of their Keystone-takers is cheating in this way, a student could get away with such dishonest activities without consequence. Additionally, staring at screens for hours causes eye strain and using the computer for math just isn’t practical -- it’s much more difficult to type out complex algorithms instead of scratching them out in seconds. Then there’s the whole mess of setting up the testing site, proctoring and explaining the use of the computers, and so many more unenumerated side effects of the state government’s decision. Though the immediate benefit of less wasted paper is enticing -- plenty of trees would be grateful -- more research into the movement of mandated testing to computerized versions should be conducted before any more states blindly take this step. Photos Courtesy Of: Pixabay
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Elena Caputo
Hi! My name is Elena, and I'm a senior at Wilson and one of the Editors of the Editorial section. If you have any questions or ideas or if you want to write, email me at [email protected]! Olivia MonosHello! My name is Olivia and I'm a junior this year, and one of the editors of the Editorial section! I'm really excited to write for the Paw Print again this year!
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