The process-product research summarized by Brophy and Good and a host of other has supported the positive effects of certain teaching practices of the 19th century, written exam began to take hold as the primary means to appraise a student’s knowledge.
The dawn of 20th century brought with it the mass distribution of lead pencils and a new breed of assessment, the standardized achievement test. Psychologists such as Thorndike and Terman sought to design uniform assessments “to evaluate the inherent abilities of students in order to make decisions about the kind of educational opportunities they should have. Today, standardized testing has become a political reality in the mandated programs that exist in almost every state. The fundamental question, however, that should drive educational policy and practice in the testing debate is simple. Do test improve student learning? All other reasons, such as accountability, teacher evaluation, and program evaluation, cannot be justified unless the somehow enhance student learning. The less of instructional time, restricted curriculum scope, the anxiety testing creates, the sense of failure some students and schools experience, and the unjustified conclusions that are drawn from test scores all argue against the use of tests unless they can be put to a compelling purpose. Given the grave, unintended consequences of high-stakes testing, tests must be used with great care and concern for those involved in the enterprise and with the goal of better educational outcomes foe students.
Despite the concerns and criticisms that often are leveled at today’s high-stakes testing. It is a reality. Furthermore, growing evidence suggests that the impact of high-stakes testing can produce positive result. For instance, a study in Chicago on student achievement in promotional gate grades found that test scores increased substantially following introduction of high-stakes testing. More specifically, in reading, “students with low skills experienced the largest improvement in learning gains in the year prior to testing, while students with skills closer to their grade level experienced the greatest benefits in mathematics. In another study, this time on the impact of high-stakes testing on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) mathematics test from 1996-2000, the researchers found that “student in high-accountability states averaged significantly greater gains on the NAEP 8th-grade math teat than students is states with little or no state measures to improve student performance.
The critical role played by testing takes on particular urgency when it indicates the mastery of basic skills such as reading, writing, and computing. Without these skills, elementary students are truly doomed to failure. Therefore, we must identify these skill deficits early and address them aggressively if we are to provide the foundation for all later learning. No amount of ingenious teaching can compensate for the lack of instructional level reading skills in the later grades. Poor reading skills compromise possible achievement throughout a student’s school career. Tests are one means of ensuring a minimum standard of quality, especially for children who are in the poorest schools, by illuminating the vast discrepancies in student achievement levels.
Fortunately, student learning can and should be demonstrated by a variety of assessments. The range of possible strategies to assess student learning includes
• Norm-referenced achievement tests,
• Criterion-referenced tests, and
• Other types of student assessments.