"Fuller points to the book Measuring Up by Harvard professor Daniel Koretz, which argues that students learn test-taking strategies that pollute testers’ ability to see what the students actually know. “The whole issue is that any test at the kind of level that it’s at, especially with it being multiple choice—you can sit down and teach a kid how to pass it without them understanding the concepts behind the test,” Fuller argues. He’s particularly critical of the number of multiple-choice questions that Texas state assessments feature, but says few in the Legislature want to hear about the drawbacks of such exams. The combination of Pearson’s power and reformers’ influence, he says, makes it difficult for legislators to assess testing’s efficacy."

—

The Pearson Graduate - The Texas Observer

This is what is known as the Hawthorne Effect. Basically, as you start measuring performance, subjects become aware of the impact of measurements and adjust behavior accordingly. The more we test, and the more high stakes these tests become, the more effort students, teachers, and administrators spend on passing the test.

This may or may not mean that they put effort into learning the material to pass the test. It just means that they work to pass the test. There are numerous ways to potentially do this; cheating, gaming the system in some way, spending time on test taking strategies like process of elimination, etc.

The real questions we should be asking ourselves are:

  1. What do we want our kids to know?

  2. How much of that information do they already know and what’s left over that they still need to learn?

  3. What is the most effective way to teach them that portion that still remains to be learned?

Testing can only provide the answer to question 2, and provide insight over time on the answers to question 3. However, it can only do this if we view testing and test results as a tool and not an end unto itself.