"Why Should Educators Assess Student Learning?"

Sometimes, when a student is way overage for her grade, teachers will still pass her to the next grade because, if she gets even further behind, it's not likely that she will graduate high school. This means a student moves on, regardless of how she does on an exam, class assignments, participation and, as a whole, how well she understands the material. In a section of Alan J. Singer's book Social Studies for Secondary Schools, he examines the question: Why should educators assess learning?

"According to the [National Council for Social Studies] (1991)," he writes, "'the overriding purpose of testing in social studies classrooms is to improve learning.' Unfortunately, that is not always the case."

There are various ways to excite students about taking tests and, more importantly, desiring high grades when taking them. Singer recites a few he experienced as an education student in college: encourage competition between students for higher grades (so that everyone would study), make all of the choices on multiple-choice tests the same length, avoid making "B" the right answer too often (because it is the most popular "wild guess" answer) -- among other tips. But, Singer returns to his main question as to why educators assess students using tests and grading. He is quite critical of the concept and argues that "testing and grading are only indirectly related to instruction and the assessment of learning. Additionally, the assumption here is that education is a series of contests between students and teachers."

The chief purposes of attending school are to (1) learn academic material and (2) use that material to become academically prepared for the following grade (or, year in school). But singer argues that:

"The purpose of testing was to assignment grades. Tests and grades were weapons to control classes and make students do the work through extrinsic rewards and punishments. Students who tried, but who did not do very well, we offered extra help, but ultimately put in 'slower' classes where they would 'experience success.' Those who failed the tests because they did not seem to care were cajoled with threats, calls or letters home, low grades, or failure for the course."

Again, Singer provides examples as to why tests and grading do not directly related to their jobs of helping students to learn the academic materials and preparing students for the next school year. Finally, he uses a specific example of one student who was quite charismatic about school and usually performed well but only in class -- never on tests. The student loved social studies and was very vocal in class, but he refused to do homework assignments and failed miserably on the tests. After retaking tests -- even after studying, but only upon Singer's request -- he still failed. Eventually, one day during lunch, Singer read aloud to him multiple choice questions and the students fed back the answers. He answered 80 percent of them correctly. Singer describes the student:

"He understood what we were studying in class, but he did not know how to read well enough to do the homework assignments or distinguish between the choices on the multiple-choice tests."

Ultimately, the student passed the class, enabling him to move on to high school. But, that was only because he was already overage for middle school. Singer explained that this case might be one of extremity but argued that it common to have students like him -- students who are excited about the information and about the classes but continue to perform poorly on tests because of poor literacy skills. "Unfortunately, in teaching, as in life," Singer said, "there are few fairy tale endings."