What is a test? It’s supposed to be an assessment. It’s a moment designed to tell you, “This is where you are in your educational development.” (Admittedly, a multiple-choice test isn’t a very good assessment; among other problems, there is a 25% margin of error when the student has no knowledge of the question. But making the test a better assessment is a different article.)

Assessments are helpful for a very important rule in pedagogy, hierarchy. Or, as I like to say it, “Meeting the student where he is.” As an educator, you need to find the place where the student’s knowledge meets his ignorance, and teach there. If the student hasn’t mastered addition and subtraction, don’t teach him multiplication. If he can’t read Green Eggs and Ham, don’t start studying Crime and Punishment. A good assessment can help you find out where the student is on the subject’s ladder of knowledge so you can best help him get to the next higher rung.

The problem of testing is not so much the test itself, but rather how schools and teachers “prepare” for the test. Oftentimes this test prep involves simply repeatedly working through sample tests. This makes two pedagogical errors: 

The first error involves the very thing the test is supposed to help you with, hierarchy. If the student is being tested on multiplication and does not understand addition, repeatedly working through sample test multiplication problems is a bad strategy. If the student reads at the level of Dr. Seuss, repeatedly asking comprehension questions from sample test passages written at the level of Dostoyevsky is not helpful. In both cases, the truth that an individual’s current knowledge is built upon more fundamental knowledge (hierarchy) is ignored.   

The second error is the very thing education itself is supposed to help you with, teleology, keeping in mind the goal of education. The goal of education is not discussed nearly enough, but for now let’s borrow a working goal from Horace Mann: “Education is to inspire the love of truth as the supremest good, and to clarify the vision of the intellect to discern it.” If this was our goal of education, then every course, every lesson, every word out of the teacher’s mouth should be a means to achieving that goal. Now if the assessment is measuring the student’s progress toward that goal (which it should), why are we engaging in test preparation as something distinct from regular teaching? Either the test is not gauging our progress toward that ultimate educational goal (which is bad), or our everyday teaching is not done with our ultimate educational goal in mind (which is criminal). 

So don’t fear the test. But beware of “test preparation.” My experience is that most educators are conscientious professionals. As such, they should be able to explain the following: If the test is assessing the normal educational process, why is test preparation so important and prevalent? And if they can’t, as professionals, they should welcome the discussion.