Teaching to the Test

A lot of people dislike No Child Left Behind–style test-driven reforms because they fear that schools will "teach to the tests." That is, the schools will focus on content that will likely appear on tests, as well as teach strategies to game specific assessment tools, rather than effectively teach the broad content and understanding that tests, ideally, should merely sample in order to gauge student mastery. If this were the case, it would both severely constrict how much of educational value kids actually learn and call into serious question whether improved test scores really signify improved learning.

Whether or not this “teaching to the test” regularly happens is a highly debatable — and debated — matter. Reading today’s Washington Post article about considerable one-year improvements in D.C. test scores, however, certainly gives you pause to think that when test results are almost all that schools are judged on, mastery of the tests — not the subjects — could truly end up being all that really matters.