Students Taking a Test
For years, students have been sitting down to take tests as a way of measuring how much they know about a subject. From standardized to multiple-choice tests, tests have been the benchmark of learning for years. But are they actually measuring knowledge, or are they just testing a student’s ability to memorize facts or do well on a test?
An increasing number of studies indicate that conventional testing strategies are perhaps not the best predictors of actual understanding. High-stakes testing, as one study by the National Research Council revealed, tends to lead students toward rote memorization and not toward learning in depth. Education specialist Dr. Rebecca Sinclair puts it this way: “Many tests are designed to measure recall, not critical thinking.”A student can memorize the dates of a historical event, but that doesn’t mean they know the cause and effects.
This is more than just a classroom problem. In a 2021 Journal of Educational Psychology study, researchers found that test-taking proficiency students were doing better even when their actual level of understanding was not as strong. This questions whether tests can really measure intelligence or if it’s just a matter of having the ability to get through tests well.
High school student Maddox Sardinas has the following to say: “I’ve always been able to memorize things super quickly, but I forget everything the moment after the test. It makes me wonder if I actually learned anything or if I just became good at cramming.”
This attitude is shared by university student Emily Lawson, who explains, “When I went to university, I found that the test-taking strategies I developed in high school did not automatically apply to outside-the-classroom knowledge. I had to be taught how to think critically and use concepts rather than memorizing things.”
But some teachers counter that testing remains an essential tool to measure progress. “While the old-fashioned test is not perfect, it does give us some standard against which to measure the performance of the students,” explains Erin Merry, a Chelsea High School math teacher. “The trick is to supplement the testing with other means of assessment, like essays and projects, in order to find out more exactly what students really know.
Standardized testing, although faulted, continues to play a significant role in college admissions and job requirements. The SAT and ACT, for instance, are used to measure students’ readiness for college, despite research findings that socioeconomic status and resource availability have been shown to affect test performance. “Although the test scores skew towards wealthy students who have access to tutors and test retakes, the college system is skewed regardless of tests. They reflect the socioeconomic disparity that already exists in society and academics,” says The Texan.
Other forms of evaluation, such as project work and open questions, have increasingly been used as a way of testing deeper learning. These approaches encourage students to apply their learning rather than to memorize information. In Finland, for example, students are rarely given standard tests, but the country is consistently at or near the head of international rankings for education. Their focus on problem-solving and conceptual understanding may be the principal explanation for this.
Additionally, some U.S. schools are now piloting competency-based education (CBE), a model whereby students advance at their own speed when they show competence in subjects rather than on timed tests. This experiment has been praised for developing greater understanding and reducing test anxiety.
While arguments continue to be made about testing, one thing is clear: how students are tested profoundly affects how they learn. Whether tests will shift to better reflect real understanding or remain a test of technique and memorization is something that students, teachers, and policymakers need to continue to explore. As growing evidence indicates that standardized tests won’t always get it right about real learning, alternative testing may soon become an increasingly larger part of the education scene.
