Resolved: Public high school students in the United States ought be required to pass standardize

Is social advancement, lack of objective standards, and avoiding stress on students really best for students or the country? Is core competence in some subjects more important than competence in other subjects? Should employers expect a high school diploma to mean something? Those are the questions considered in this debate. I claim that exit testing from high school, done to non-trivial standards, is a basic step in restoring meaningful education. Con's arguments against the imperfections of testing apply to all tests by anyone on any subject for any purpose. All tests induce anxiety in the test taker, have imperfect questions, and can be made too simple to guarantee anything. Con's reference said that insofar as exit exams have been implemented, they are all too easy to guarantee competence. The overall failure rate is only 1%-2%, including the states with more difficult tests. Employers agree the the tests certify nothing. In this debate, I have consistently advocated raising the test standard from eighth grade competence to at least tenth grade competence. If anything, it ought to be higher than that. I raised the point that everyone from airline pilots to hairdressers must pass standardized tests, despite all the real-world limitations of testing. Con never suggested that such testing ought to abandoned, and his only counter was that high school students were too young to be stressed. Stress in part of life, and a very necessary part of learning. That applies not only to math and science, but to sports, games, debate tournaments, and even dating. No one, not even Con, suggests it is important to reduce stress in those other areas. Con argues that test anxiety is detrimental to learning. Anyone who says that they will study just as hard if there is no test as they do if there is a stiff test is a born storyteller. It is not remotely credible. Con erroneously claimed that testing costs a lot. He abandoned the point after it was shown to be less than $12 per year. Con claimed that it was unfair to a person's whole future depend on one test, but it is universally allowed to let failing students retake the test many times. Con claimed that subjects not tested are ignored, and provided some evidence that teachers ignore them. I argued that if teachers are foolishly spending time teaching eighth grade subjects to a student who is already competent at that level, then the problem lies with the teaching, not the testing. The remedy is better curriculum guidance. Beyond that, states are left to determine what subjects are tested in the exit exam and which are not. If there is too much language, math, and science and not enough of something else, educators can change the balance. Con did not respond to either argument. The organization that Con cited for international rankings, PISA, says on their web site that they only test science and that they include measures of enthusiasm for the subject, not just what students know. No matter what they test, , the European systems Con believes we should emulate are mediocre. He says we ought not use the best school systems, the ones in Asia, for comparison because "it's ingrained in their culture that they are hard workers." I think that means that we need to ingrain hard work into American schools, not that we ought to strive for mediocrity. We are competing in world markets, so we need to bring our standards up to that level. Even if we somehow convince ourselves that mediocrity is good enough, it should be an honest mediocrity measured by objective testing, not by awarding fraudulent diplomas. Meaningful testing would raise standards and reward those who do work hard with meaningful diplomas. The benefits of exit exams are to provide employers and others with an objective certification of competence. Con's objections are largely trivial; the best school systems rely on standardized testing and get the best results as a consequence. Objective standardized tests also indicate how well schools are doing their jobs, and we need to know that to know which need improvement. The resolution is affirmed.