Does Testing Overlook the Importance of Long Term Learning

No high-achieving nation tests every child, every year, in the way we're currently doing. They have much more intellectually ambitious assessments [or measuring not just memory but what students can do with knowledge].

-- Ed Finkel, 2010

As the epigraph above emphasizes, during an era when critical thinking skills have assumed new importance, young people's academic and professional careers are still being controlled by high-stakes standardized testing regimes and teachers are increasingly being held accountable for student performance. As a result, it is little wonder that there has been a growing tendency on the part of many educators to "teach to the test." Indeed, and as also underscored by the epigraph above, the classroom testing process itself can be viewed as being counterproductive to the extent that it detracts from long-term learning and the development of the critical thinking skills young people need today to be competitive in the workplace. This paper reviews the literature to demonstrate how testing tends to overlook the importance of long-term learning, followed by a summary of the research and important findings about the implications of testing on long-term learning in the conclusion.

So-called "teaching to the test" simply means that classroom teachers focus coursework on the contents of upcoming tests, including the high-stakes standardized tests that have become virtually universal in their use. For instance, according to one educator, "High-stakes, standardized tests have become ubiquitous in public education in the United States. Teachers across the country are feeling the intensified pressures from high-stakes testing policies and are responding to these pressures by teaching to the tests in varying ways" (Au, 2009, p. 43). While there has been an across-the-board increase in these pressures throughout the U.S. in recent years due to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Roach, 2014), some states have experienced these pressures differently, with teachers in lower-performing states being invariably more likely to teach to the test compared to their counterparts in higher-performing states (Au, 2009). Notwithstanding these state-level differences, however, there has also been a corresponding general increase in the use of standardized tests in the United States over the past 30 years that has profoundly affected the manner in which young people are evaluated for academic progress (Roach, 2014).

Given these criticisms, it is not surprising that current testing regimes in the U.S. have become the focus of an increasing amount of criticism from educators and policymakers alike who recognize the harmful long-term effects that these assessment methods can have on the development of the critical thinking skills that are needed by youth people today. In this regard, the editors of the Policy Brief Series (2011) emphasize that, "critics of these accountability systems have argued that they will not lead to meaningful increases in student learning because of incentives to 'teach to the test' at the expense of more valuable classroom activities, leading students to have deficits in critical thinking skills" (New assessments for improved accountability, p. 1).

Although there are superior alternative assessment methods to testing available such as student portfolios that provide a more comprehensive evaluation of academic progress, these alternatives are highly time-consuming and many busy classroom teachers are unable to use them effectively (Khattri & Reeve, 2000). In response to these limitations and constraints as well as former President Barack Obama's call for states to identify alternative assessment methods that "don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity" (as cited in Finkel, 2010, p. 78).

Some educators cite the emergence of nation-wide Common Core standards as being a step in the right direction. For example, according to Riley (2013), Common Core standards "strive to make the way teachers teach more practical, more applicable to those real-world problems" (p. 24). Moreover, Common Core standards require students to approach problem-solving exercises in dramatically different ways from conventional teaching strategies, and include opportunities to apply knowledge and skills to real-world problems in ways that promote critical thinking (Riley, 2013). In sum, the Common Core standards are "designed to deepen critical thinking and emphasize application of knowledge and skills"" (Riley, 2013, p. 25). Although widely adopted throughout the United States, eight states have rejected Common Core standards as being inappropriate for their students, meaning that even this worthwhile initiative has failed to completely address the fundamental problem of teaching to the test and its adverse effects on long-term learning nationwide (Standards in your state, 2017).

The research showed that over the past 30 years, the use of standardized testing regimes in the nation's schools and calls for increased accountability for classroom teachers have fueled a growing tendency to teach to the test. In reality, though, these outcomes were foreseeable and a growing body of evidence confirms that conventional testing methods fail to inculcate the long-term learning outcomes that are needed to provide young people with the critical thinking skills they need in the 21st century workplace. Although the research also showed that a large majority of states have adopted the Common Core standards which promote critical thinking skills, eight states continue to use their own curricula and traditional assessment methods to the detriment of their students.

References

Au, W. (2009, Winter). Social studies, social justice. Teacher Education Quarterly, 36(1), 43.

Finkel, E. (2010, August). Gearing up for the new assessment: The next generation of standardized testing will focus on critical thinking skills. District Administration, 46(7), 78-81.

New assessments for improved accountability. (2011, September 1). Policy Brief Series, 9, 1-4.

Khattri, N. & Reeve, A. L. (2000). Principles and practices of performance assessment. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Riley, C. (2013, November/December). The Common Core, aligned assessments and the 21st-century classroom: Lessons learned from educators. Techniques, 88(8), 24-27.

Roach, R. (2014, March 13). Teaching to the test: Concerns about the use of standardized tests persist in American education. Diverse Issues in Higher Education, 31(3), 32-35.

Standards in your state. (2017). Common Core State Standards Initiative. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/standards-in-your-state/.