Chemical Education Today
Editorial
Testing the Teacher? Or Teaching the Test? Accountability is in vogue. In principle it is a great idea. If we are successful as teachers, then our students ought to be successful as students. Measuring students’ academic success should help to evaluate how well we are doing as teachers. It can, provided we obtain an accurate measure, but that is not easy. And a single accurate measure is not sufficient. Teachers of the educationally disadvantaged may help their students learn a great deal, but those students may still not perform up to the level of students whose backgrounds have been much richer intellectually. Accountability is more complicated than many of its current advocates seem to think. In 1997 President Clinton proposed voluntary national tests in reading and mathematics, thereby initiating a wider debate on the appropriate use of standardized tests. Shortly thereafter the U.S. Congress enacted Public Law 105-78, which directs the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study of large-scale, high-stakes achievement tests. The NAS report was published in 1999 (1). Some of its conclusions seem obvious: •
Tests should not be used to evaluate individual mastery unless students have been taught the knowledge and skills on which they will be evaluated.
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High-stakes decisions, such as assignment to an academic track, promotion from one grade to another, or graduation from high school, should not be made on the basis of a single test score.
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Prior to a test students should not be allowed to see items that will be used on the test or be coached specifically and narrowly on the content of a test.
In too many cases these apparently obvious tenets of testing are being ignored—to the detriment of students, teachers, schools, and the entire educational system. High-stakes decisions are based on single tests in many states, and in some cases the test results are just plain wrong. In May of last year, 47,000 Minnesota students were given scores lower than they deserved because of erroneous grading of a standardized test (2). Some of them were unable to graduate and lost jobs they had been promised, because this single test was a requirement for graduation. In a separate case of mistaken scoring, students in New York City, Indiana, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin received lower scores than they deserved because a 1999 test was incorrectly deemed easier than earlier versions and percentile scores were adjusted accordingly (2). Many students who did not need to take summer remedial courses were assigned to do so, schools were incorrectly classified as inadequate and their budgets unnecessarily increased for remediation, and principals and other administrators lost their jobs. After the error was detected, those jobs were not necessarily restored. Although the company that produced the erroneous results had recommended against using a single test to decide issues such as required summer-school attendance, schools nevertheless used the test for that purpose; many have since changed that policy.
The stakes are high enough that teaching to the test is almost Accountability is a requirement. The Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) more complicated has been praised as a means by which Texas schools have been than many of its able to improve the quality of education and by which teachers current advocates and schools can be objectively evaluated and compared. Howseem to think. ever, there is considerable evidence that TAAS scores are being influenced by teaching to the test (3, 4). Students take practice tests as many as five times before taking the real test, there are remedial TAAS courses in some schools and TAAS sections in textbooks, and materials to coach students on the TAAS are even available via the Web (5). One advantage of the Web-based coaching is that it can be done during scheduled computer periods, allowing regular class time to be used for the normal curriculum. One can infer that students spend a lot of time on test preparation that traditionally would have been devoted to studying academic subjects. The pressure on students, teachers, and administrators is enormous, and some of them are opting out. In New York City tenured teachers (who can choose their assignments) are avoiding the fourth grade (where tests are given that determine an elementary school’s ranking). According to one teacher, “The test-prep books have basically become our curriculum” (6). Tests, including those written by someone other than the teacher, are a good thing. They provide one useful measure of the success of a student, course, teacher, or school. But too much of a good thing can cause serious, long-term harm. Let us resolve to use tests judiciously, thoughtfully, and appropriately, and to influence others to do the same. Literature Cited 1. High Stakes Testing for Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation; Heubert, J. P.; Hauser, R. M., Eds.; National Academy Press: Washington, DC, 1999; http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/ books/highstakes (accessed Jun 2001). 2. Steinberg, J.; Henriques, D. B. None of the Above; The New York Times May 21, 2001, p A1; May 22, 2001, p A1. 3. Glenn, T.; Akin, M. Questioning Testing; School Administrator 1996, 53, 26. 4. Klein, S. P.; Hamilton, L. S.; McCaffrey, D. F.; Stecher, B. M. What Do Test Scores in Texas Tell Us? Educ. Policy Anal. Arch. 2000, 8 (49); http://olam.ed.asu.edu/epaa/v8n49 (accessed Jun 2001). 5. Morris, B. R. School Testing Bandwagon Spawns Web Coaching Sites; The New York Times May 24, 2001, p D6. 6. Goodnough, A. High Stakes of Fourth-Grade Tests Are Driving Off Veteran Teachers; The New York Times June 14, 2001, p A1.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 8 August 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education
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