Standardization and its discontents

We face some of the dilemmas of test season.

One of our tutor-consultant’s students was very stressed this past week, even beyond her normal state (which is considerably so).  The reason is that she had an impending AP exam in History, but in her class the teacher had not yet reached World War II; she expected a question on, say, President Nixon.

We should explain the background.  Advanced Placement, AP, classes are taught in High Schools, but with a college-level content and pace.  In May and June the nationwide-standard AP tests are given.  If the student scores high enough, most colleges will add the course to the student’s transcript just as if it had been taken as an undergraduate there.  The content of each course, and thus that of the test, is decided by a committee of undergraduate (in this case) History teachers.  It’s up to the High Schools to cover the material in their classes.

If a normal History class goes too slowly to cover the planned material, then any teacher we know would adjust the final exam to reflect that.  In an AP course, it’s not possible.  Your students may learn an amazing amount, enriching their lives and stimulating their interests, but if you don’t teach to the test it’s hard for them to get AP credit.

“Teaching to the test” is a direct consequence of having a test in the first place.  Having a standardized, nationwide test of some importance means that the grading criteria are carefully specified in advance, so as to be fair.  Subjective factors and things that cannot be easily measured are excluded.

In turn, a small industry springs up to “teach to the test.”  You can buy any number of books and hire any number of tutors to get your student prepared.  Especially in mathematics and science tests, the students learn methods of test strategy and dealing with set-piece problems that have no application at all outside the test.

Students can take ordinary courses, avoiding these complications.  But taking no AP courses at all can appear unambitious to college admissions people.  And since each class-hour in college costs money, there is a strong incentive to get as much out of the way beforehand as possible.

Even then, there are the nationwide, standardized, general college admissions tests: the SAT and ACT.  It’s virtually impossible to get into college in this country without one of them.  Everything we’ve said about “teaching to the test” goes double for these.

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any replacement for the standardized test coming in the foreseeable future.  Colleges need some arguably objective way to rank the overwhelming number of applicants, even if it does not measure what they want to measure, or doesn’t measure it well.  (One experienced college teacher we know said once, “Standardized test scores are a good predictor of just one thing: performance on standardized tests.”)

What we need is a way to test things that we actually want the students to learn.