A More Nuanced Look at Testing

Toss the word "testing" into a crowded room full of educators and the result is likely to be a cacophony of strong opinions on all sides. Some find the concept of summative assessment to be antithetical to the very purpose of education, while others see almost any metric as culturally biased and inevitably freighted with perpetuating historical privilege. On the other hand, there will be those who see testing as a crucial means to an end: allocating scarce and valuable resources in the form of seats at a university or access to graduate and professional programs. 

Into this debate, Nicholas Lemann, a professor of journalism and dean emeritus at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, tosses a rare, nuanced look at testing in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education piece.  

"...the question of who should get the slots in highly selective colleges and universities, besides being very difficult to settle, is not the primary issue in American higher education, especially from the point of view of enhancing democracy and opportunity. It gets far more attention than it deserves. Only about 1 percent of American undergraduates attend the 25 or so colleges that accept fewer than 10 percent of their applicants. Only 3 percent attend the 50 or so colleges that accept fewer than 25 percent of their applicants. The selectivity of admission to college is not a major factor in the lives of the overwhelming majority of young Americans." 

This means that schools, parents, students, and faculty over-index on test results and, as Lemann also argues, under-index on what matters for most students: navigating a successful path to completing a university degree. A staggering proportion of entering freshmen still fail to graduate despite the well-documented lifetime income advantages of having a university degree. For all the attention it receives, testing as we know it adds almost nothing to the conversation about how to address this problem.