What's Wrong With Teaching For The Test?

In a quest to show better performance, educators may be harming students in the long term

As the quest for high test scores goes on and the pressure mounts on educators to meet higher goals, many teachers have reconciled themselves to skipping traditional curricular content and replacing it with only that material that is likely to appear on the next standardized test.

In some cases, this measure is one of self defense. Site administrators are told, "If your test scores don't go up, you may lose your job." Teachers also know that if their students' achievement test scores fluctuate too much from year to year, they too could be demoted or dismissed. Several school districts, including Broward County, Fla., have made test scores a part of teacher evaluation criteria.

Although teachers and administrators know they have no control over the academic preparedness of students when then begin their school careers, they realize they are expected to educate the students to an increasingly higher level of scoring. For many educators placed in this high-stakes position, the only recourse is to teach for the test. In other words, the only material taught is that which has appeared on similar tests in the past.

In fact, some people see nothing wrong with this practice. They offer a quick-fix type answer: "At least we can be sure that students have learned something." But have they really learned something? How much have they actually benefited from digesting this required material? Those who would advocate teaching for the test need to examine first these deterrents.

Harmful Impact

The practice of teaching to the test has eight significant undesirable effects. That practice:

* Invalidates the test.

Teaching for the test actually can invalidate test scores and defeat the purpose of the test. According to Robert L. Linn and Norman E. Gronlund, authors of Measurement and Assessment in Teaching, "This (teaching for the test) not only would be an undesirable narrowing of what is taught, but would be likely to inflate test scores and change the meaning of results, possibly changing the construct measured from problem solving to memorization ability."

It is not inconceivable that an overly ambitious or competitive principal or teacher might drill students on test-item material in an effort to score higher than his or her colleagues' classes,

* Promotes convergent thinking.

This practice also promotes convergent thinking while emphasizing that students need to search for the one right answer. Creative ideas or divergent thinking is discouraged as students narrow the scope of their thinking toward what will be on the test.

How sad it is to think that many of our children with bright, creative minds have their divergent thought patterns curtailed in searching for a pre-established answer.

* Promotes learning information that may be obsolete.

In 1970, Alvin Toffler, in his book Future Shock, made a point that is valid today as we approach the new millennium. He wrote, "For education the lesson is clear. Its prime objective must be to increase the individual's 'cope-ability'--the speed and economy with which he can adapt to continual change."

Toffler claimed (even before the widespread use of powerful computers) that the "here and now environment" soon will vanish. "Johnny must learn to anticipate the directions and rate of change ... and so must Johnny's teachers," he said.

If Toffler is correct, there is little use in memorizing data in order to score high on a test.

* Excludes the arts and extracurricular activities.

An overzealous teacher might well ask, "Why take time to go on a field trip if it doesn't increase test scores?" In like manner, subjects such as art, music and physical education could be strongly de-emphasized in the competition for high marks.

One elementary school teacher in North Carolina reported that her request for a field trip was turned down because "the objectives of the trip did not coincide with the test material."

* Excludes the affective domain.

In 1973, psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote that there was another side to the student that was equally important as cognitive learning. This aspect was explained as the affective or personal side of education. It consisted of mentoring to a student's needs, feelings and interests in order to maximize learning and produce a mentally healthy student.

Since the standardized tests do not deal with affective material, this part of learning is omitted.

* Overlooks discovery learning and promotes didactic instruction.

Educators from John Dewey to Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner have stressed the value of active learning. Numerous books by these individuals and others point to the fact students retain information longer if they actively participate in discovering knowledge. Dewey's famous quote, "What we have to learn, we learn by doing" would not be practical in teaching for the test.

* Involves only short-term memory.

Author Jeanne Ormrod, who wrote Educational Psychology-Developing Learners, explained that each learner has to carefully "encode" or translate material that is taught in order to transfer that learning to the long-term memory where it becomes knowledge. Material that is taught for immediate use in a testing situation could likely wind up getting only as far as the short-term memory.

* Excludes higher-order thinking skills.

Psychologist David Elkind noted that the "aim of psychometric education, which is to produce children who do well on achievement tests, is in direct apposition to the aim of developmental education, which is to produce critical and creative thinkers." Elkind concluded that the "developmental approach seeks to create students who want to know, whereas the psychometric approach seeks to produce students who know what we want."

Why Compare?

Faced with all these deterrents, a well-meaning school official could say, "Yes, but if we don't teach for the test, we will be low in comparison with other schools in other locations." A proper response to that might be "Why compare?" When demographics, student abilities, financial capability and community expectations differ from place to place, what valid reasons can there be for comparing schools, counties, states and even countries? What is gained by these comparisons and what do they prove? What is wrong with measuring each school, county or state against itself?

There is nothing wrong with establishing and maintaining proficiency standards for schools (provided that these standards can be achieved within the context of the school's funding and community support), but unilateral comparisons of these scores make no sense.

In our zeal to provide measures of accountability to the public it is well to remember that, unlike other professions, the product of teaching is not easy to quantify. While the best physician might be the one who performs the most successful operations and the best attorney might be the one who wins the most cases, this same yardstick cannot be applied to education. It is not necessarily true that the best educator is the one with the highest-achieving students.

In the case of the doctor or lawyer, each has clients who willingly place themselves in the hands of the professional and pay for his or her services. The educator, on the other hand, deals with students who may be unwilling to learn or whose parents or community do not provide proper support.

To return to the original question, "What's wrong with teaching for the test?" let me suggest a more apt query: "What's right about it?"

Jack Kaufhold, a former superintendent, is a professor of educational psychology at Nova Southeastern University, 3301 College Ave., Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 33314.