Grady High Student: 'Testing turns schools into pressure cookers'

junior Isabelle Taft is a product of Atlanta Public Schools.

She attended , and moved onto Grady two years ago.

According to Taft, all the schools in the Grady cluster have one thing in common — an overemphasis on preparation for the state-wide standardized test known as the CRCT.

"Teachers and staff spent all their time worshipping a being called the CRCT with cult-like devotion," Taft wrote in an editorial pubished on Huffington Post. "We wrote and acted out skits addressing issues we might encounter while taking the exams, such as broken pencils, testing anxiety, and dwindling time."

, education experts nationwide are questioning the value of standardized testing in public school.

Taft wrote that standardized testing "turns schools into pressure cookers" and suggested teaching students "skills to become productive members of society."

More from Taft:

When we were supposed to be in gym, band, or Spanish class we attended assemblies at which the principal explained exactly how many of us needed to pass and how many to exceed in order for our school to avoid being placed on the "Needs Improvement" list. We all knew what this meant; we had learned the depressing jargon of No Child Left Behind. We went to "ice cream socials" where the entertainment consisted primarily of a call-and-response chant of: "WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?" "PASS THE CRCT!" I have very little doubt that if the students at Inman Middle School hadn't been able to pass the CRCT, teachers would have felt they had no choice but to do whatever it took to avoid the excessive consequences of failure.

Such is the mentality created by an overreliance on standardized tests to measure student achievement. Still more dangerous is the phenomenon of allocating funds and accolades based on test results. The current system incentivizes horrendously unethical behavior that ultimately deprives the most at-risk students of a decent education. Even where cheating doesn't occur, the emphasis on standardized tests wastes time and causes students to internalize the idea that school is all about learning how to shade the right bubbles.

Read the full editorial by Taft on the Huffington Post website.

Editor's note: In the original version of this article, Patch incorrectly reported which elementary school Taft attended. Patch regrets this error.