Don't Let Scandal Scuttle Standards

摘要

Like love and marriage; standards and tests go together. Tests can determine the strengths and weaknesses of individual students. They are a motivational tool. They are a way of evaluating the performance of teachers and principals and school systems. Probably most important, they are a lever that can be used to change what schools teach and how they teach it. Any test whose result is consequential—for the student, for the teacher, for the school or (one of the main consequences) for local real-estate values-will generate the kind of frenzied behavior that eternally characterizes humans in the vicinity of systems of reward and punishment. Cheating is only one example. Another, more common, is relentless "teaching to the test." Another is contriving to keep the likely low scorers out of the pool of test takers. The list of problems associated with testing is nearly endless.