TESTING IS A MUST

Public attitude toward student testing is a curious and multifaceted thing often seldom addressed but not from the point of view of why do we test. After all, it is almost impossible to design a test if we do not know why we give the tests. You and I both know we can write tests to give us the results we want. I can write a test that everyone will pass, and one everyone will fail. After 30 years, I can predict the mean score on a test I write within in narrow margin. I wrote tests for multiple reasons. By writing the test to yield an average of 75, I caused problems. Seldom did anyone every write a perfect paper, but I had to guard against making it impossible for that to happen. At the end of the year, I could tell which students were the best and which one who were not doing well. I posted the results by score with no identifiers associated with the score. Some of my colleagues were writing test that everyone

I changed Universities mid-career. The first class at the new university, I wrote an examination, and the mean score was 74.5 as predicted. Surprisingly, within minutes of posting the results, the associate dean of education requested an emergency meeting with me. He told me he had a near riot in his office. The policy at that university was that the college administration had fixed grades for all classes to test scores; 90 to 100 was an “A”, 80 to 89 was a “B”. The final blow was that 70 top 79 was a “C”. My class was composed of professional career students; they had to have a “B+” average prerequisite for my class. In other words, they probably had never received a “C” grade in their life. My office filled with disgruntled students waving papers with numerical grades. To everyone’s satisfaction, the solution was easy; I satisfied both the students and myself by marking on a curve; it was a form of letter grade inflation. Students with a test score from 70 to 79 were suddenly “B grade” students. Still I knew my students had the prerequisites to learned the material, learn it from the way I presented it, and I knew who were the best students and who were not so good. In addition, they learned where they stood in class.

Seldom do I hear anyone talk about in a way that suggests there is a common understanding about the purpose of testing. The remarks either address directly or imply that the reason for giving tests range from punishment, to show “them” who is the boss, and to find out what teachers to fire. We should be talking about such things as learning how to teach better, what subjects and to what depth should we teach those subjects, and in what environment should we teach them. Of course, we cannot ignore the connection, a battlefield between politics and education.  Religion plays and unhealthy role in education.  Arguments usually centers on funding with teacher crying for more money and taxpayers carrying for lower taxes; thus, are talking about efficiency of educations—more bang for the buck.

However, above all else, we should be learning how to write and grade tests to answer the questions teachers want answers. Especially, educational administrators should be doing the same thing. Standardized testing is for naught if they are only terrifying challenge for students and teachers. Of course, reasonable testing will be revealed poor teachers and be the main guide as opposed to personality surveys of parents and students. Of course, teachers unions should protect a teacher’s right to teach what the school community hires them to teach and not base job security on seniority.  Tenure is not seniority; unions should not sully their reputations by protecting bad teachers or teaching.

A poor educational administrator is one who makes judgments of merit on anything but what the student learns. Administrators have corrupted some discipline in our universities by basing merit on ability to generate research funding and not teaching ability.

For example, the University of Minnesota has a chemical engineer as a president who enforces a requirement for demonstrating entrepreneurial leadership for the “faculty” to granting tenure. In other words, it is not the faculty who grants tenure but the industrial giants who want free research done by professors at state taxpayer expense. What does this have to do with testing; it testing has no purpose, why bother. Professors are there for a salary and are no longer teachers. High school and grade school teachers are more than just paid employees; they are professionals in a sweaty palm job who need evaluation—testing is a vital part of all of this—so educators must do it and they must do it well. 

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