Educational testing

As I pore over old articles about education funding and Charter Schools I come across one recurring thread: the idea that the quality of the educational service provided by a school is measured by how well its students do on standardized tests. I find this thinking problematic for two reasons. The first is that it’s difficult to determine the contribution of school to one’s learning amid factors such as student aptitude and interest and family support. A good friend commented to me once that he was in the sixth grade before he learned anything at school that he hadn’t already learned at home. To think that his school was getting the credit for his achievement all those years….

The second reason is that the knowledge that one learns at school is the least valuable aspect of one’s education. Half of it is untrue and the other half is useless. More useful is the accessibility to information gained from study, and most valuable is the credibility one earns from reaching a standard of excellence. So why, then, do we focus so much attention on test scores? One reason is that knowledge is relatively easy to measure. The sophistication of our testing can tell us quite precisely what historical knowledge a student has retained or how well she reads. This knowledge tends to correlate to other factors that are harder to measure: intellectual habits and diligence of study. Students with higher test scores are more likely to go to college, earn higher incomes and have better marriages. But we mistakenly think that correlation implies causation. It sounds silly when we say it like this: if you retain lots of facts about Indiana State history now, you’ll be a better spouse. But we often say it like this: Get those kids to score better on those tests and they’ll be able to make more money in the economy. If it were that easy we could send them off in the world with an encyclopedia and a dictionary and they’d be set. Most people learn the information most useful to them in the years after formal education.

Should we continue to test student knowledge of codified standards? Of course we should. The tests provide us with valuable information about the students and afford them the ability to earn academic credibility. But it should not be the only standard of excellence they can strive for, nor do their scores have any direct relevance to the value of educational services provided by schools.