Are there any real-world skills that standardized testing can help develop?

Effectively preparing for standardized tests brings improvement in all manner of school-related academic skills! After all, mastering a reading/math/writing/data-interpretation test, to be taken under time pressure, will teach a student a broad array of skills, meant to be applied quickly and in any context; this mastery makes one better at taking school tests, giving presentations, and engaging in academic challenges of all stripes. Reading comprehension and problem solving are the name of the game! This is similar to the way strength training and cardio make one a better athlete—while it’s not time spent practicing one’s actual sport, it *is* time spent improving the abilities that underlie that sport.

Additionally, as social media, video games, etc. have crowded out many typical experiences students have, such as learning a musical instrument, students have fewer opportunities to engage in skill-building through consistent practice. In this way, studying for standardized tests fills an important need: that of teaching students the value of persistence. Typically as my students become familiar with the tests, they begin to learn faster as they improve their study skills and recall abilities, and find more effective ways to absorb information and retain it. Their persistence is rewarded as they become more efficient and effective students, a skill-set that will be forever valuable to them.

So if you’re hesitant to believe that standardized tests can be good for anything, contemplate all of the challenges on a standardized test, without the ability to later appeal to the judge (as we have in school), to complain about the test, or to ask for more time, or more consideration, or sympathy: these are indeed real world challenges that learning how to overcome will add a great deal to the student’s academic skill-set.

**Remember that the ACT is going “partly digital” in April 2025, as they will be giving students the choice of whether they would like to test on a computer or on paper; the ACT will be removing this option and going ‘digital only’ in Sept. 2025. Pretty cool if you know whether you’re a “pencil & paper” type of student or not: you’ll get your choice of how you would like to take the ACT, at least from April to September 2025.