High-stakes sandwich

New England Journal of Higher Education, The, Fall 2001 by Sacks, Peter

And though the consequences of failing these graduation exams are high, there's virtually no evidence that performance on such tests significantly predicts college grades or graduation rates. Consider P-16 efforts in New York City, in which the City University of New York (CUNY) system now requires students to pass standardized tests for entry to the four-year colleges. The Rand Corp. has estimated that the required placement tests predict just 6.2 percent of the variation in grades of first-year students at CUNY's four-year schools and a scant 2.5 percent of the variation in grades at the two-year colleges. Those are pathetic indicators of college performance by any measure. In fact, policymakers who would use high school exit exams also as college-entrance tests should carefully study whether performance on these exams has any bearing on one's actual ability to do college-level work.

Failing a state's K-12 "exit" exam, of course, dooms a young person's chances of attending college. I spoke to a young Hispanic woman in Texas who failed that state's high school exit test seven times, always by as little as a point or two. She had been a good student, earning Bs in school, until her repeated failures on the graduation exam demoralized her and quashed her dreams of studying law enforcement in college.

For the sake of both equity and intellectual rigor, higher education should resist these trends toward standardization. As the ultimate defenders of both fairness and academic integrity, university faculty themselves should counter the widespread and inaccurate belief that standardized tests can readily and almost flawlessly measure the academic quality of institutions and the merit of individuals.

Are there too many entering college students who need remedial help? Probably. Will the imposition of more standards and testing fix that problem? No. In fact, it will make the problem worse. College faculty will eventually have to confront one of the unintended effects of the high-stakes testing movement in schools: students who, though perhaps adequately trained in grammar and spelling, lack intellectual curiosity, creativity and initiative.

Our most promising students-regardless of their test scores-are those who have the simple desire to think and accept the world as a complex place in which knowledge cannot be spoon-fed to them in bite-sized chunks that neatly correspond to a multiple-choice test item. Those aren't traits inculcated by a culture in which students are taught to equate accomplishment with the ability to passively learn only what's necessary to perform well on standardized tests.

Yes, there is important work to be done to create stronger relationships between public schools and higher education. But doing so shouldn't be about the alignment of academic standards between the two realms. It should be about engaging young people in the value of an intellectual life and a love of learning that will enable them to succeed both as students and as citizens. Our obsession with standards and measurement as the main ways to forge those links will prove counterproductive.