"Among the controversies in education and schooling, perhaps nowhere
is contradiction more apparent than in tests and testing.
Standardized testing has been a part of the American educational and
employment scene for almost 100 years. A recent lead article in
Time Magazine's Oct. 27, [2003] issue describing some of the most
significant changes in the SAT beginning in 2005 has renewed interest
in the long debate over the distinction between scholastic aptitude
and academic achievement. The article also underscores this nation's
continued ambivalence toward tests and testing."

Folks:

The posting below is the second in the monthly series called Carnegie
Foundation Perspectives. These short commentaries exploring various
educational issues are produced by the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching <<http://www.carnegiefoundation.org>.  The
Foundation invites your response at:
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With respect to the posting below (November, 2003), Carnegie
Foundation president, Lee Shulman notes:

    This month's commentary is written by Lloyd Bond and addresses the
    complicated topic of standardized testing. Lloyd, who is now a senior
    scholar with the Carnegie Foundation, has long worked with the
    College Board and other national organizations seeking to develop
    fair and valid assessment tools. He was a faculty member at the
    University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the University of
    Pittsburgh before joining Carnegie.

    This piece takes a personal and honest look at the often
    contradictory ways in which tests are seen and used. Formulating
    thoughtful policies about testing, at whatever level, depends on
    confronting our ambivalence regarding testing and acknowledging both
    its virtues and its problems. So, welcome once again to a Carnegie
    perspective


      A Different Way to Think About Testing - The Positive Uses of
Contradiction

By Lloyd Bond

Several years ago the Washington Post featured a story on an African
American teenager in one of the D.C. schools who had obtained a
perfect 1600 on the SAT. Her teachers and other school officials
beamed with pride about what a dedicated, serious, and bright girl
this student was. Suddenly the SAT, so much maligned as a biased
gatekeeper of the establishment, a proxy for social class and racial
privilege with no real value as a predictor of college success, was
confirmation of a particular minority student's academic brilliance.

I was struck and mildly amused by the contradiction. Upon further
reflection, however, I realized that I was guilty of the same
inconsistency, and not just on one occasion or two, but over much of
my professional life. Like the labor union negotiator who berates
management for its mean-spirited stinginess, but tells the rank and
file they are the best paid workers in the world with the highest
standard of living, I realized that I had been telling contradictory
stories about test fairness and bias depending upon my audience. For
years I have complained to test development companies that they must
do a better job of test construction; that their tests are imperfect
and only modestly related to later success; that they must be
constantly vigilant to ensure that biases do not burrow their way
into the assessments. Being African American, I am often asked to
speak to minority students and their parents about testing. When
doing so, I have insisted that there is nothing wrong with the SAT,
the ACT, and other measures of academic achievement; that they must
not kill the messenger but heed the message; that they must knuckle
down and study hard.

Is this a case of intellectual dishonesty, or is there a deeper, more
subtle truth to be found here? To be sure, the labor negotiator and I
are not unique. Contradiction seems to inhere in the human social
fabric. Anyone searching for clean, simple, and unambiguous solutions
to the problems of school quality, religious strife, the environment,
affirmative action, homelessness, and a host of other societal
problems is in for bitter disappointment. Simple solutions do not
exist. Even in a search for guiding principles to live by, one is
confronted with contradiction and complexity. "Look before you leap,"
but "He who hesitates is lost." Indeed, Aristotle's famous
prescription for health and longevity, "Moderation in all things,"
has its polar opposite in the philosophy of the legendary
octogenarian Mae West who quipped, "Too much of anything can be
wonderful."

Among the controversies in education and schooling, perhaps nowhere
is contradiction more apparent than in tests and testing.
Standardized testing has been a part of the American educational and
employment scene for almost 100 years. The recent lead article in
Time Magazine's Oct. 27 issue describing some of the most significant
changes in the SAT beginning in 2005 has renewed interest in the long
debate over the distinction between scholastic aptitude and academic
achievement. The article also underscores this nation's continued
ambivalence toward tests and testing.

We are told by its defenders that the SAT is a superb measure of
academic promise, but its detractors insist that it is next to
useless in helping colleges and universities select their entering
class. Test-driven accountability systems have been criticized as
counter-productive, and praised as the best solution yet to failing
schools. Teachers insist that externally imposed standardized tests
distort instruction, but public officials and policy makers maintain
that well-constructed, curriculum-related examinations are the only
reliable and valid alternative to inflated grades. Commercial
coaching schools, not to mention students and their parents, insist
that coaching on admissions tests is highly effective and can raise
students' scores by hundreds of points; but test developers maintain
that coaching results in only minimal score gains over and above
regular instruction in school. Their defenders insist that
certification and licensure tests ensure standards of quality and
protect the public from incompetent practitioners, but critics insist
that performance on such tests is unrelated to professional success
and competence. And perhaps most controversial of all, test critics
insist that standardized tests are culturally biased against
minorities and the poor, while test developers insist that their
tests fairly reflect genuine differences in academic preparedness
that are the result of unequal educational opportunity.

Can any virtue be found in such a morass of contradictions and
partial truths? With respect to test bias at least, and perhaps in
other controversies as well, I believe so. In telling two different
stories to management and to his constituency, the labor leader was
attempting to get an agreement, to drive both parties toward each
other. In telling different stories to test developers and to African
American students and their parents, I was attempting to get both
parties on the same page, and to induce in both a certain tension, a
sense that they could, in fact, be wrong.

Just as an easy complacency on the part of test developers and users
is to be discouraged, so also is a defeatist conviction on the part
of students that their future is foreclosed, their educational
aspirations doomed by implacably biased tests that cannot be
mastered, even through hard work and study.
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