BY ELLIOT W EISNmER
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* Oct. 2-3, 2003 - Albuquerque, NM a Mar. 11-12, 2004 - Indianapolis, IN ,Jtmune 10-11. 2004 - Las Vegas, NV
* Oct. 9-10, 2003 - Orlando, FL
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school classroom. It turns out that the range of reading erjudgment cannot be trusted, while tests, which are stan-
ability approximates the grade level.3 This means that in dardized and therefore yield comparable data, have a de-
the second grade, when children are approximately 7 years gree of precision that teachers cannot match. Moreover,
old, the range of reading ability is about two years. In the tests are statistically reliable instruments, and equivalent
third grade, the range is about three years; in the fourth forms yield scores that are highly correlated. Thus tests
grade, aboutfour years.Thus in atypical fourth grade, some possess a scientific aura and are used extensively as the
students will be reading at the sixth-grade level, and some primary data source for making judgments about the qual-
will be reading at the second-grade level. By the time stu- ity of education students are receiving.
dents reach the sixth grade, some will be reading at the One important educational purpose of testing isto pro-
third-grade level, and some will be reading at the ninth- vide information that has some relationship to tasks that
grade level. go beyond the particular items to which students are asked
As children mature, their personalities become increas- to respond. However, getting a high score on a test that has
ingly distinctive. Their aptitudes develop, their proclivities little predictive or concurrent validity is no educational vir-
emerge, they develop distinctive interests, traits, and ways tue. Yet this is precisely the problem that pervades testing
of working. The idea that all children who are 10 are or practice. What test scores predict best are other test scores.
should be at the same level is a bogus expectation. In fact, Their status as proxies for other forms of performance isdu-
a teacher who taught only a body of content defined by a bious.
single grade level would be providing a level of teaching In any case, the function of schools is surely not pri-
inappropriate for most of the class. marily to enable students to do well on tests - or even to
do well in school itself. What one wants, it seems to me,
4. The real outcomes of schooling can be measured by is to provide a curriculum and a school environment that
tests employed within the school. In the United States, we enable students to develop the dispositions, the appetites,
have developed a sophisticated technology of testing.This the skills, and the ideas that will allow them to live per-
technology was given a major push during the FirstWorld sonally satisfying and socially productive lives. In other
War when tests were first used to select men suitable as can- words, the really important dependent variables in educa-
didates for officers' training. American schools give more tion are not test scores or even skil Isperformed in the con-
tests to students each year than schools in any other coun- text of schools; they are the tasks students are able to com-
try in the world. The testing industry in the U.S. is large and plete successfully in the lives they lead outside of schools.
highly profitable. One argument for using tests isthat teach- There is a huge difference between knowing how to read
10. The best way to identify schools that work well isto 11. The primary content that students learn in school is
examine their students' test scores. As I indicated above, what their teachers intend to teach them. John Dewey
there is probably no nation that makes greater use of tests once remarked that the greatest fallacy in education isthe
than does the United States. Tests are contrived tasks that assumption that students learn only what they are being
are intended to sample behavior that will make it possible taught at the time."5 Infact, what students learn isboth more
to determine what astudent knows and can do. Test scores and less than what teachers intend to teach. They learn less
are believed to be proxies for the quality of education that because students seldom achieve the lofty aims that teach-
students have received and for what it is that they have ers hold for them; our ambitions, educationally speaking,
learned. Yet what test scores predict best are other test scores. virtual ly always exceed our capacity. Indeed, if all students
Ironically, we encounter tests in just a few places outside achieved what we hoped they would, we would probably
of the context of schools. Thus we have designed a system regard our aims as being too low.
that employs culturally rare events to make significant judg- At the same time, students learn more than we intend to
ments about the quality of education students receive. teach. They learn more because what they learn isnot sim-
This system has several important consequences for ply afunction of whatteachers intend to teach, but of what
schools. First, the curriculum typically gets narrowed so students themselves bring to the table. The concept of in-
that it reflects a relatively narrow array of what tests are teraction is key here. The meanings that are made by stu-
capable of measuring. Second, the tests themselves have dents are a function of their intentions and the conceptu-
very little predictive validity on mostof the tasks and forms al material they bring to the situation that teachers create.
of action that students engage in outside the context of And since for each student that background isin some de-
schools. Third, the use of tests leads students to focus their gree different, meanings always differ.These meanings are
attention on grades or scores and thereby diverts attention related to the interaction between the individual and the