Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Students tend to be judged this exact same way.

Everyone is told to follow their dreams but to also stick to the routine. No student has the same needs but they are forced to learn the same ways. Their grade is reflected by how much they study a topic that can be so general instead of focusing on the creativity and talents of a specific person.

“In a perfect world I would love us to have kind of a model where rather than percentages, like zero to 100, it would be a point based system [from zero to five]. Grades wouldn’t be a 98 percent, they would be a four,” William Deal said. “Some students are struggling really hard to be good students and get far behind, but sometimes a bump in the road or life event occurs that impacts there grade negatively, that grade makes the light at the end of the tunnel dim significantly or just turn off.”

The grading system holds students accountable for not meeting perfection. The 100% on a quiz means that you know all the information. Anything below that perfect score means that you scored less than perfect.

But the question arises, what really is perfection? Is it the standards set by others many years ago, or the ability to have profound knowledge or skills in one or more areas?

“We can take things like multiple choice tests to see if you are exactly right with your answer, but it tells us nothing about what you are thinking about that problem,” Dr. Brian Wargo said. “A better way to think of assessing is to look at evaluating the overall features or acts that we find, in whole, to be relevant to education. For instance, in a science class, it should not be about memorizing facts, since that is very worthless these days, but what we should be doing is [testing] how you can act, think and speak as a scientist.”

The SATs are standardized tests offered by the college board. It tests students’ knowledge that colleges use in the application and acceptance portions of enrollment. In 2016, the popular test taken by mainly juniors and seniors had some major adjustments. First, the test would now be scored out of 1600 instead of the previous 2400. Secondly, if a student does not know the answer to a question or makes a guess, they are not penalized for it. In 2015, the college board also partnered with Khan Academy to provide free test preparation materials.

If the standardized tests are changing, then why can’t school curriculum change? The education system is one of the most used systems throughout the world. It is there to help children learn and change the world we live in. Why are we focusing on a score that shows nothing other than that people have different needs when it comes to learning?

If a doctor were to prescribe every patient he worked for the same medicine, then the results would be catastrophic, possibly fatal. That is why people are given different treatments; they are all different and no two brains or bodies are the same. Why are we treating the future of our country as a number or letter grade and focusing on competition instead of individuality?