SCHOOLS ARE QUESTIONING THE WORKHORSE OF
U.S. EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT, THE STANDARDIZED TEST,
AS THEY SEARCH FOR MORE AUTHENTIC WAYS TO
GAUGE STUDENT PERFORMANCE
When U.S. gymnast Kerri Strug chalked her hands and stretched her muscles before competing in Atlanta last summer, her goals were clear: Get good lift on the mount. Don't over-rotate the dismount. Nail the double-twisting Yurchenko. Stick the landing. For Strug, the standards for a 10 were as solid and familiar as the balance beam beneath her feet.
Olympic athletes win by knowing exactly what a gold-medal performance looks like. But the clear targets and exacting standards that Strug and her teammates strove for during years of training often elude students in America's classrooms. Learning goals are fuzzy. State and district standards are buried in policy manuals. Assessment methods don't match teaching practices. Progressive schools teach students to solve problems, work in teams, think creatively, and be innovative. But many of those same schools then line students up in rows, hand them standardized test booklets, give them No. 2 pencils, and tell them to fill in the bubbles.
American schoolchildren take 100 million standardized tests a year. If the average test has 100 multiple-choice questions, students fill in 10 billion bubbles annually. But those bubbles are beginning to burst as educators and policymakers acknowledge that too often, schools fail to test what they teach. Or, conversely, schools tailor curriculum to fit multiple-choice tests that measure memorization and fact-retention instead of critical thinking and other complex skills we want kids to acquire.
As schools increasingly stress active learning over rote learning, meaning over mechanics, traditional testing looks more and more like an outgrown warm-up suit: It's too narrow and leaves too much uncovered.
A revolution in assessment is under way at every level, from individual classrooms to entire states. Sometimes the changes are ignited by teachers who are uneasy with the clash between teaching and testing. Sometimes the changes are mandated by lawmakers who want more meaningful clues to how well schools are doing. A few states are throwing out standardized tests altogether. Others are blending them with alternative methods, such as performances or portfolios.
In these pages we review the research, and we tell the stories of several Northwest communities that have undertaken a quest for better assessments--a quest that is yielding not only new ways to assess, but also new ways to teach.
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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