John Oliver Teaches You About The Flaws With Standardized Testing on Last Week Tonight

Let’s be honest. Nobody likes tests. Especially standardized tests that don’t even work. And John Oliver decided to really examine why we take so many exams and if they even benefit us in this week’s Last Week Tonight.

And surprise! They don’t. The late night host took on initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and Barack Obama’s own Race to the Top, demonstrating that, although the intentions behind them are good in theory, they are unrealistic and useless in practice.

Oliver included testimonies from students and teachers, who find themselves stressed and limited by the pressure to do well on standardized tests that are poorly designed to truly measure what needs to be addressed in schools when it comes to classroom learning.

And if all that sounds too dense and dreary, he caps it all off with a dancing monkey mascot that a school used to pump up students for standardized tests, something that seems as impossible as actually succeeding at the tests themselves.

You can watch it in the player above.