essay exams are a fair way of testing students

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What Does the Research Say About Testing?

There’s too much testing in schools, most teachers agree, but well-designed classroom tests and quizzes can improve student recall and retention.

For many teachers, the image of students sitting in silence filling out bubbles, computing mathematical equations, or writing timed essays causes an intensely negative reaction.

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002 and its 2015 update, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), every third through eighth grader in U.S. public schools now takes tests calibrated to state standards, with the aggregate results made public. In a study of the nation’s largest urban school districts , students took an average of 112 standardized tests between pre-K and grade 12.

This annual testing ritual can take time from genuine learning, say many educators , and puts pressure on the least advantaged districts to focus on test prep—not to mention adding airless, stultifying hours of proctoring to teachers’ lives. “Tests don’t explicitly teach anything. Teachers do,” writes Jose Vilson , a middle school math teacher in New York City. Instead of standardized tests, students “should have tests created by teachers with the goal of learning more about the students’ abilities and interests,” echoes Meena Negandhi, math coordinator at the French American Academy in Jersey City, New Jersey.

The pushback on high-stakes testing has also accelerated a national conversation about how students truly learn and retain information. Over the past decade and a half, educators have been moving away from traditional testing —particularly multiple choice tests—and turning to hands-on projects and competency-based assessments that focus on goals such as critical thinking and mastery rather than rote memorization.

But educators shouldn’t give up on traditional classroom tests so quickly. Research has found that tests can be valuable tools to help students learn , if designed and administered with format, timing, and content in mind—and a clear purpose to improve student learning.

Not All Tests Are Bad

One of the most useful kinds of tests are the least time-consuming: quick, easy practice quizzes on recently taught content. Tests can be especially beneficial if they are given frequently and provide near-immediate feedback to help students improve. This retrieval practice can be as simple as asking students to write down two to four facts from the prior day or giving them a brief quiz on a previous class lesson.

Retrieval practice works because it helps students retain information in a better way than simply studying material, according to research . While reviewing concepts can help students become more familiar with a topic, information is quickly forgotten without more active learning strategies like frequent practice quizzes.

But to reduce anxiety and stereotype threat—the fear of conforming to a negative stereotype about a group that one belongs to—retrieval-type practice tests also need to be low-stakes (with minor to no grades) and administered up to three times before a final summative effort to be most effective.

Timing also matters. Students are able to do fine on high-stakes assessment tests if they take them shortly after they study. But a week or more after studying, students retain much less information and will do much worse on major assessments—especially if they’ve had no practice tests in between.

A 2006 study found that students who had brief retrieval tests before a high-stakes test remembered 60 percent of material, while those who only studied remembered 40 percent. Additionally, in a 2009 study , eighth graders who took a practice test halfway through the year remembered 10 percent more facts on a U.S. history final at the end of the year than peers who studied but took no practice test.

Short, low-stakes tests also help teachers gauge how well students understand the material and what they need to reteach. This is effective when tests are formative —that is, designed for immediate feedback so that students and teachers can see students’ areas of strength and weakness and address areas for growth. Summative tests, such as a final exam that measures how much was learned but offers no opportunities for a student to improve, have been found to be less effective.

Testing Format Matters

Teachers should tread carefully with test design, however, as not all tests help students retain information. Though multiple choice tests are relatively easy to create, they can contain misleading answer choices—that are either ambiguous or vague—or offer the infamous all-, some-, or none-of-the-above choices, which tend to encourage guessing.

While educators often rely on open-ended questions, such short-answer questions, because they seem to offer a genuine window into student thinking, research shows that there is no difference between multiple choice and constructed response questions in terms of demonstrating what students have learned.

In the end, well-constructed multiple choice tests , with clear questions and plausible answers (and no all- or none-of-the-above choices), can be a useful way to assess students’ understanding of material, particularly if the answers are quickly reviewed by the teacher.

All students do not do equally well on multiple choice tests, however. Girls tend to do less well than boys and perform better on questions with open-ended answers , according to a 2018 study by Stanford University’s Sean Reardon, which found that test format alone accounts for 25 percent of the gender difference in performance in both reading and math. Researchers hypothesize that one explanation for the gender difference on high-stakes tests is risk aversion, meaning girls tend to guess less .

Giving more time for fewer, more complex or richer testing questions can also increase performance, in part because it reduces anxiety. Research shows that simply introducing a time limit on a test can cause students to experience stress, so instead of emphasizing speed, teachers should encourage students to think deeply about the problems they’re solving.

Setting the Right Testing Conditions

Test achievement often reflects outside conditions, and how students do on tests can be shifted substantially by comments they hear and what they receive as feedback from teachers.

When teachers tell disadvantaged high school students that an upcoming assessment may be a challenge and that challenge helps the brain grow, students persist more, leading to higher grades, according to 2015 research from Stanford professor David Paunesku. Conversely, simply saying that some students are good at a task without including a growth-mindset message or the explanation that it’s because they are smart harms children’s performance —even when the task is as simple as drawing shapes.

Also harmful to student motivation are data walls displaying student scores or assessments. While data walls might be useful for educators, a 2014 study found that displaying them in classrooms led students to compare status rather than improve work.

The most positive impact on testing comes from peer or instructor comments that give the student the ability to revise or correct. For example, questions like , “Can you tell me more about what you mean?” or “Can you find evidence for that?” can encourage students to improve  engagement with their work. Perhaps not surprisingly, students do well when given multiple chances to learn and improve—and when they’re encouraged to believe that they can.

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Standardized Testing: Fair or Not?

by Dr. John Poulsen 
and Kurtis Hewson

Standardized testing in some circles is demonized as the vilest form of assessment. These individuals point to many problems with how these tests are created and administered, as well how the results are used. In other circles standardized testing represents true assessment whereby individual performances can be compared to other performances in a meaningful manner. That is, standardized testing is seen by some as a fair form of comparison; others do not. Knowing where standardized testing came from and what were the motivations for its growth, may help in understanding and perhaps in being able to use the results of standardized tests to improve teaching and learning. This article serves as an overview of the history and current realities of standardized testing.

Introduction

Considering the role standardized testing has acquired in education systems internationally, one can safely assume that a vast majority of Canadians have experienced these tests as students. More and more students’ lives are becoming influenced by standardized testing, as a societal push for educational accountability has led to a dramatic increase in the use of these assessments across districts and nations (Guskey & Jung, 2013). Their value is much debated by educators, academics, and politicians, but what is clear is that their use seems to be increasing rather than decreasing. Experiencing standardized tests as students can provide a useful perspective, however, it is important that faculty and students have a general understanding of the history of standardized or high-stakes testing, as well as a basic overview of the how these assessments are built.

This article will explore the history of standardized testing, recent developments within standardized testing, creation of test questions, and applicability.

Stiggins (2008) states that

these once-a-year tests are not likely to be of much value to classroom teachers as you plan and carry out day-to-day instruction. They are assessments OF learning that are too infrequent, broad in focus, and slow in returning results to inform the ongoing array of daily decisions. But this does not mean that these tests are without purpose or value. They can communicate valuable information about students’ achievement status to other decision makers (pp. 347-348).

This relatively rational statement could be considered a definition of the battle lines that have been drawn up between those who are proponents of standardized tests and those against them.

The intent in standardized testing is to have large numbers of students write a single test, then to compare any single score against all others to see how an individual’s score compares to the large sample. The results are then posted on a bell curve that indicates where a score sits within descriptive statistical standards. Standardized tests are given to large groups numbering at least in the thousands, sometimes millions. In order to make the results as valid as possible, thus “standardizing” the administration of the assessment, the tests are:

• written at the same time and same day for all students,
• administered with consistent instructions,
• allowed the same amount of time for each student to write the test, and
• scored in the same manner.

Scantron is a common method of marking bubble sheets of multiple-choice style questions. Essays are marked by specialists who have been trained to mark in similar fashion.

Burke (1999) maintains that traditionally “standardized” meant that the test is standard or the same in three ways: (a) format/questions, (b) instructions, and (c) time allotment. Format/questions means that the test questions are the same for all students writing the exam. The information that the students are to show they know is asked of them in the same format that is usually multiple choice. Multiple choice is the format of choice because as Stiggins (2008) suggests, “It is relatively easy to develop, administer, and score in large numbers” (p. 354). Further, in order for the test to be fair in the sense of all students having the same chance to answer each question correctly, all questions must be the same.

The instructions are to be the same as well. These are to be delivered in the same way to all students so that no students are advantaged or disadvantaged. The last standardization is time allotment. All students are to be given the same amount of time to finish the exam.

However, the standardization of standardized exams is being eroded. Common changes to standardized testing allow certain students to have more than the allotted amount of time. Some students with certain learning needs are now allowed to have more time than other students to complete the exam. These students are then often allowed to write in different rooms as well.

The second requirement of standardized tests is also frequently adapted. Students with reading problems can get “readers” to read the questions. The rationale behind this is that the curriculum asks that students know certain information. Whether the students know this information is the purpose of the exam, not whether the students can read. These readers may adapt the standardized instructions that the students receive. Also, reading the questions to the students may give them an advantage or disadvantage other students do not have. Therefore, the second and third requirements of standardized testing are no longer strongly in effect.

There are other forms of standardized testing that are available other than multiple-choice questions, for example, essay writing. This form of testing currently has the disadvantage of needing markers to assess the essays. Essay markers must be trained to gain a sense of what the standards are. Then they must engage in the time-consuming activity of reading the essays. Even with the training assessors can give significantly different grades to an essay.

Proponents of standardized testing point to large-scale use of the tests that go beyond the individual student or even the school. Standardized testing allows comparison between provincial education systems or even national education systems. Advocates say that standardized tests are impartial and rational. They state that standardized tests are an inexpensive way to check that schools and teachers are accountable, that students and therefore the public are getting the education that public dollars are paying for. Standardized tests by this measure are intended to examine the whole education system and therefore individual scores may be not as significant.

“… the standardization of standardized exams is being eroded.”

The history of standardized testing is underpinned by noble sentiments. Testing can be found in all cultures. Evaluating the understanding of someone learning a new skill is common for all societies. Standardized testing as we know it today began in earnest in China as a form of aptitude testing, trying to ascertain who would be best at a particular job. Fletcher (2009) states that, “The earliest record of standardized testing comes from China, where hopefuls for government jobs had to fill out examinations testing their knowledge of Confucian philosophy and poetry.” These exams started in about 100 CE but were firmly established during the Sui Dynasty in 605 CE. They attempted to predict aptitude by discerning the best candidates for the Chinese civil service.

The most recent impetus to standardized testing was the Industrial Revolution and the movement to increased schooling where students were moved out of the work force and into schools. One of the easiest and arguably the cheapest way to test large numbers of those children was with a standardized exam.

Alfred Binet (1857-1911) and Theodore Simon (1872-1961) developed what is now commonly known as an IQ Test, beginning in the late 1800s and culminating with the Binet-Simon scale in 1905. These intelligence tests were created in response to the French government wanting to develop special education classes for students who were not benefiting from the newly instituted regular compulsory education program. The tests tried to identify students who needed focused education in order to maximize their education. These standardized tests were an attempt to streamline education so that society would gain maximum benefit from each citizen, a noble sentiment.

The test contained problems arranged in order of difficulty in a range of subjects but had as the basis items assessing comprehension, reasoning, and judgment (Reynolds, Livingston, & Willson, 2009). Louis Terman (1877-1956), who was teaching at the time at Stanford University, noted the success of these exams and their potential applicability in America. He spearheaded the creation of the Stanford-Binet Test which remains, in its fifth iteration, the most popular IQ testing vehicle in existence.

Fletcher (2009) suggests that “… by World War I, standardized testing was standard practice: aptitude quizzes called Army Mental Tests were conducted to assign U.S. servicemen jobs during the war effort.” Robert Yerkes was one of the academics assigned to test the servicemen and then suggest appropriate placement. This testing of servicemen helped build up a record of statistical evidence for IQ testing. Carl Brigham worked with Yerkes in the testing of servicemen. After the war he published a book, A Study of American Intelligence, based on the results in World War I. From this finding and analysis he created the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in 1926. Its intention was to screen college applicants to insure the worthy candidates were allowed admission. The test became immediately popular and by 1945 it became a standard method of college and university entrance, again a noble enterprise.

Everett Linquist invented the American College Test (ACT) in 1959 as a competitor to the SAT. In 2011, more than 3.3 million individuals wrote SAT and ACT exams. The ACT is considered more of a test of accumulated knowledge while the SAT is thought to test logic. Other important standardized exams are the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT).

These standardized tests that attempt to predict success or aptitude seem to be successful. Reynolds, Livingston, and Willson (2009) state, “As a general rule, research has shown with considerable consistency that contemporary intelligence tests are good predictors of academic success” (p. 334). Fishman and Pasanella (1960) reviewed SAT predictive validity in the 1950s, finding that the median correlation between student first-year success and the SAT score was a significant 0.61. Recently Kobrin, Patterson, Shaw, Mattern, and Barbuti (2008) found a correlation of 0.29, a respectable correlation between SAT scores and First Year Grade Point Average (FYGPA).

In Alberta, standardized testing began in the 1960s. McEwen (1995) suggests that Alberta’s introduction of achievement testing for Grades 3, 6, and 9 was done in response to a worldwide wave of educational reform that wanted more accountability in education. At the Grade 12 level, diploma exams were reinstated in 1984 after being removed for a few years. McEwen clarifies the reason for the achievement tests:

Public education is funded by taxpayers who want and have a right to know if they are getting value for their investment. Such accountability requires public information. An indicator system is a tool to focus reform and to improve accountability by providing better information about the education system’s performance. The goals, or intended benefits, of implementing indicator systems are to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the educational enterprise, to improve education, and to provide a mechanism for accountability (p. 28).

Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing

The primary conundrums in standardized testing of achievement lie in the validity and applicability of the test results. Validity relates to how accurately the test results actually reflect the students’ knowledge about the subject. Standardized tests use a minimum number of questions and getting even one or two wrong due to environmental reasons will affect the individual student’s results. The factors that affect a student getting a question right or wrong may be infinite and could be organized into (a) situational/environmental confounding factors, (b) personal/emotional factors, and (c) grade-spread requirement in standardized testing.

Situational/Environmental Factors

Even though standardized testing attempts to minimize confounding variables by requiring students to write in similar situations, it may be that some students are writing in situations that are significantly different from other students, for example, it might be too bright or too dark or even too cold or too hot. The testing conditions may cause students to perform poorly such as when students might miss questions not because they do not know the material but for something as simple as the testing centre had poor lighting that caused headaches in students, or because the testing room was too cold and did not allow certain students to focus.

Personal/Emotional Factors

Students who are poor test takers because of nerves associated with tests may not be able to show what they can accomplish in the high-stakes atmosphere of standardized testing. Their anxiety becomes the determining factor of how well they do the test, not whether they know the material. Even students who are normally good test takers can have a skewed result; for example, a student who had an emotional moment just before the test might not be able to focus and receives a result that is not reflective of his or her capabilities.

Grade-Spread Requirement

Perhaps the primary concern with achievement standardized testing is that testing should be based on curricular outcomes that are mandated by the provincial or state governing bodies. Standardized tests have to make a one-size-fits-all test that will not fit all because as Popham (1999) says, “… standardized achievement tests will invariably contain a number of items that are not aligned with what’s emphasized in a particular setting” (p. 331). A 1983 study of alignment between textbook content and the standardized test found that, “In no case was even 50 percent of a test’s content satisfactorily addressed in any textbook” (Popham, p. 331). That is, there was a poor correlation between what was in the test and in the textbooks that were a prime resource to prepare students for the test.

Test creators seek a score spread in their questions. They seek questions that are not answered correctly by too many students. Questions that are answered correctly by more than 60% of the students are usually removed from the test. Popham indicates this is a problem because “… items on which students perform well often cover the content that, because of its importance, teachers stress” (p. 332). So the important material that is required by the curriculum is often not tested.

How questions are determined to be most worthy for standardized testing is important. When deciding which questions to use, test creators, in essence, try to find questions that only the top 50% of the students will get right. These types of questions are popular in standardized testing because they support the common theory of testing whereby the highest achieving students answer the questions correctly. So, standardized tests can be self-affirming. Students who are in the top 50% of the class answered the questions correctly because they are in the top 50% of the class.

Further, if a concept is taught to all students in a class and all students answer the question correctly, that question will not be used in the future as it does not spread the students’ scores so that fine-grained norm-referenced numbers can be associated with each student. That is, if all students did well on the test then there would be no bell curve and the associate connection with where each student sits on the curve. Put more simply, there have to be questions that are only answered by about 50% of the students in order for comparisons to be made.

A student’s socio-economic status is highly correlated to standardized achievement test scores. This is probably due to the tests being skewed to reflect learning that children gain at home. Again there is a curriculum and testing mismatch. For example, if a question asks about a “field of work” such as law or medicine, students whose parents are in such professions may understand the concept from conversations at home. However, students whose parents work in the service industry or work at the local grocery store may not. Answering the question correctly may not be a function of what was learned at school but rather what has been learned out of school. Antagonists to standardized achievement testing suggest that it is not fair to check on student achievement that is not in the curriculum.

What instructors or textbooks focus on may not be reflected in the test. The requirement for a score spread in the exams means that questions that are answered by a majority of students will probably be removed because they do not discriminate enough.

The history of standardized testing suggests that the impetus for large-scale testing has been based on noble aspirations, primarily that of having the right person in the right place, whether that place is the correct job in the military or the correct form of education. Standardized testing has value in today’s society. Aptitude testing for admission into colleges and universities seems to be especially effective as quantitative research has established links between such testing and later success at post-secondary institutions.

Achievement testing has issues especially related to situational/environmental factors, personal/emotional factors, and grade-spread requirement that may make applicability difficult to ascertain. That is, standardized testing may be best at determining aptitude or future ability in an individual and also good at examining a school district’s efficaciousness. Standardized tests seem to be weaker at being able to correctly indicate how much a specific student has learned.

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Alberta Assessment Consortium (2012). A new look at public assurance: Imagining the possibilities for Alberta students. Retrieved from http://www.aac.ab.ca/a-new-look-at-public-assurance-imagining-the-possibilities-for-alberta-students.html

Alberta Education (1997). Teaching Quality Standard applicable to the provision of basic education in Alberta. (Ministerial order #016/97). Retrieved from http://education.alberta.ca/media/6734948/teaching%20quality%20standard%20-%20english.pdf

Bew, Lord P. (2011). Independent review of key stage 2 testing, assessment and accountability, final report, as written for the Department of Education. Retrieved from https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-00068-2011

Boardman, A. G., & Woodruff, A. L. (2004). Teacher change and “high stakes” assessment: What happens to professional development. Teaching & Teacher Education, 20(6), 545-557.

Booi, L., & Couture, J. C. (2011). Testing, testing. What Alberta can learn from Finland about standardization and the role of the teacher. Alberta Views, 7, 28-32.

Brookhart, S. M. (2001). The “Standards” and classroom assessment research. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, Dallas, TX. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED451189).

Burke, K. (1999). The mindful school: How to assess authentic learning (3rd ed.). Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Publishing.

Fishman, J. A., & Pasanella, A. K. (1960). College admission selection studies. Review of Educational Research, 30(4), 298-310.

Fletcher, D. (2009, December 11). Standardized testing. Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1947019,00.html

Franklin, C. A., & Snow-Gerono, J. L. (2007). Perceptions of teaching in an environment of standardized testing: Voices from the field. The Researcher, 21(1), 2-21.

Gordon, S. P., & Reese, M. (1997). High-stakes testing: Worth the price? Journal of School Leadership, 7, 345-368.

Gronlund, N., & Waugh, C. (2009). Assessment of student achievement (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Guskey, T. R., & Jung, L. A. (2013). Answers to essential questions about standards, assessments, grading, & reporting. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Kobrin, J., Patterson, B., Shaw, E., Mattern, K., & Barbuti, S. (2008). Validity of SAT for predicting first year college grade point average (Report No. 2008-5). New York, NY: College Board. Retrieved from http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/Validity_of_the_SAT_for_Predicting_First_Year_College_Grade_Point_Average.pdf

McEwen, N. (1995). Accountability in education in Canada. Canadian Journal of Education, 20, 1-17.

Pedulla, J. P. (2003). State-mandated testing – What do teachers think? Educational Leadership, 61(3), 42-46.

Popham, J. (2002). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know (3rd ed.) Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Popham, W. J. (1999). Why standardized tests don’t measure educational quality. Educational Leadership, 56(6), 8-15.

Reynolds, C., Livingston, R., & Willson, V. (2009). Measurement and assessment in education (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Stiggins, R. J. (1999). Are you assessment literate? The High School Journal, 6(5), 20-23.

Stiggins, R. J. (2008). An introduction to student-involved assessment for learning (5th ed.). Columbus, OH: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.

Should we do away with exams altogether? No, but we need to rethink their design and purpose

Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology, Macquarie University

Senior Lecturer in Educational Assessment, Macquarie University

Disclosure statement

Penny Van Bergen has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Rod Lane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Macquarie University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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In our five-part series, Making Sense of Exams , we’ll discuss the purpose of exams, whether they can be done online, overcoming exam anxiety, and effective revision techniques.

Over the past two decades there have been frequent calls to abandon exams .

The major criticisms of exams in schools and universities tend to relate to either the misuse or overuse of exams, and not to the sensible use of exams in partnership with other assessment tasks such as presentations, research reports, creative responses, essays, reflective journals etc.

Rethinking the way in which some exams are delivered does not require us to abandon all exams in favour of other assessment tasks. This is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Exams allow students to demonstrate their breadth of knowledge across a particular subject. This is more difficult to achieve with other forms of assessment.

Students also demonstrate their ability to retrieve and apply knowledge on the spot: a skill necessary in many professions.

But we need to look at what the evidence tells us about when exams are effective – and when other types of assessment are more suitable.

In debates about exams, the same myths are often brought up again and again. Here’s what the research tells us about three of the most common exam myths:

Myth 1: exams only test for the recall of facts

One of the most common arguments offered against exams is that they test for rote recall only and not for deeper understanding.

Like others, we have experienced the frustration of sitting for an exam that focuses almost exclusively on the recall of isolated facts. Research shows that such exams are more common when teachers either write questions quickly or rely on published tests from testing banks. In both cases, the teacher has less opportunity to review whether or not the questions require deep understanding and higher-order thinking, which require the learner to both hold a strong body of disciplinary knowledge and be capable of applying it.

The solution is not to abandon exams, but to change how poorly designed exam questions are written.

A well-designed exam will assess the application of knowledge to real-world scenarios, the synthesis of knowledge across sub-topics, the ability to think critically, or to solve well-defined problems within a discipline.

These higher-order processes depend entirely on the question being asked. According to research, even quite short professional development programs for teachers are effective in changing the way they write exam questions.

Exams should not be used to assess the recall of meaningless facts: this is a misuse of the format.

Myth 2: Google renders exams irrelevant

A second argument sometimes offered against exams is that everything can be found on Google anyway.

The implication, of course, is that we no longer need knowledge in our brains when we have phones in our pockets.

A variant of this argument is that internet access should always be permitted during exams as this mirrors our experiences in real life.

These arguments are problematic for two reasons.

First, research shows that people without knowledge in a particular field are surprisingly poor at finding accurate information on Google. They are more likely to find and believe conspiracy theories, for example, less likely to know what search terms to use, and less likely to reason logically about the information they find.

Second, looking up information on Google is not the same as accessing a pre-existing network of knowledge in the brain.

Pre-existing knowledge is critical because it guides the way in which we interpret new information and underpins critical thinking and problem solving .

Even if a student is taught generic skills in critical thinking and analysis, a wide breadth of knowledge is also needed to know what arguments are relevant in a particular domain and how they might be applied. This breadth of knowledge cannot be obtained simply by Googling.

It is precisely because our teachers, surgeons, scientists and building engineers have an established network of knowledge in their fields, held in long-term memory , that they are able to instantaneously apply this knowledge in the workplace, critically assess the validity of incoming information, and solve emerging problems on the run.

Myth 3: exam study does not enhance learning

Exams do not just assess learning, they promote learning in several ways:

Organising yourself to study promotes self-regulation and metacognition (that is, your understanding and control of your own learning processes).

Re-organising and elaborating on the to-be-tested material during study enables deeper understanding of the material.

The process of actively retrieving and applying that material multiple times during study is one of the best possible ways to strengthen knowledge. Just as practice helps muscles grow stronger during exercise, so too does it make connections in the brain grow stronger during study.

Of course, some study techniques are better than others.

Research shows that study in which students mentally manipulate the material – perhaps by forming their own questions, or by considering how different topics relate to one another – is more effective than study in which students passively scan their notes.

These techniques are a form of “deep encoding” , in which the student is required to actively negotiate meaning and to make decisions about what goes with what.

Research also shows that spacing out study over time is more effective for retaining information than cramming the night before .

With this knowledge, teachers can support students to study in the most effective ways possible.

Exams should be used within a balanced assessment program

The goal of any assessment program is to enable students to demonstrate what they know and can do . Within this program, exams have specific advantages.

Exams should not be used in all assessments (or even in all disciplines). Some types of assessments are clearly better suited to particular kinds of knowledge and skills than others.

Where research skills are important, a research proposal or report may be more appropriate.

Where oral communication skills are important, a presentation task may be more appropriate.

And where depth of knowledge of a single topic is important – either because of the specific topic itself or because a more focused investigation will allow the student to practise and refine particular learning skills – then an essay, class debate, or similar assessment may be more appropriate.

But arguing that exams cannot do everything is not the same as arguing they can do nothing. In nearly all school and university courses there are multiple goals, therefore a balanced assessment program is critical .

When considering the purpose of exams

We need to be careful when considering the use of exams in schools and universities.

We need to know that they are appropriate to the knowledge and skills being assessed, and that they form part of a balanced assessment program with a range of different assessment tasks.

We also must be aware of the unintended consequences that emerge in specific testing circumstances.

This is true for national testing programs such as the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), for example, where the potential to publicly rank schools has led to concerns about “ teaching to the test ” and narrowing the curriculum. These unintended consequences must be addressed.

When used well, however, exams offer several advantages for learning.

• Read more from the series.

• Universities
• School assessment
• Making Sense of Exams

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• Essay Exams

Essay exams provide opportunities to evaluate students’ reasoning skills such as the ability to compare and contrast concepts, justify a position on a topic, interpret cases from the perspective of different theories or models, evaluate a claim or assertion with evidence, design an experiment, and other higher level cognitive skills. They can reveal if students understand the theory behind course material or how different concepts and theories relate to each other. 

+ Advantages and Challenges of essay exams

Advantages:

• Can be used to measure higher order cognitive skills
• Takes relatively less time to write questions
• Difficult for respondents to get correct answers by guessing

Challenges:

• Can be time consuming to administer and to score
• Can be challenging to identify measurable, reliable criteria for assessing student responses
• Limited range of content can be sampled during any one testing period
• Timed exams in general add stress unrelated to a student's mastery of the material

+ Creating an essay exam

• Limit the use of essay questions to learning aims that require learners to share their thinking processes, connect and analyze information, and communicate their understanding for a specific purpose. 
• Write each item so that students clearly understand the specific task and what deliverables are required for a complete answer (e.g. diagram, amount of evidence, number of examples).
• Indicate the relative amount of time and effort students should spend on each essay item, for example “2 – 3 sentences should suffice for this question”.
• Consider using several narrowly focused items rather than one broad item.
• Consider offering students choice among essay questions, while ensuring that all learning aims are assessed.

When designing essay exams, consider the reasoning skills you want to assess in your students. The following table lists different skills to measure with example prompts to guide assessment questions. 

+ Preparing students for an essay exam

Adapted from Piontek, 2008

Prior to the essay exam

• Administer a formative assessment that asks students to do a brief write on a question similar to one you will use on an exam and provide them with feedback on their responses.
• Provide students with examples of essay responses that do and do not meet your criteria and standards. 
• Provide students with the learning aims they will be responsible for mastering to help them focus their preparation appropriately.
• Have students apply the scoring rubric to sample essay responses and provide them with feedback on their work.

Resource video : 2-minute video description of a formative assessment that helps prepare students for an essay exam. 

+ Administering an essay exam

• Provide adequate time for students to take the assessment. A strategy some instructors use is to time themselves answering the exam questions completely and then multiply that time by 3-4.
• Endeavor to create a distraction-free environment.
• Review the suggestions for informal accommodations for multilingual learners , which may be helpful in setting up an essay exam for all learners.

+ Grading an essay exam

To ensure essays are graded fairly and without bias:

• Outline what constitutes an acceptable answer (criteria for knowledge and skills).
• Select an appropriate scoring method based on the criteria.
• Clarify the role of writing mechanics and other factors independent of the learning aims being measured.
• Share with students ahead of time.
• Use a systematic process for scoring each essay item.  For instance, score all responses to a single question in one setting.
• Anonymize student work (if possible) to ensure fairer and more objective feedback. For example students could use their student ID number in place of their name.

+ References & Resources

• For more information on setting criteria, preparing students, and grading essay exams read:  Boye, A. (2019) Writing Better Essay Exams , IDEA paper #76.
• For more detailed descriptions of how to develop and score essay exams read: Piontek, M.E. (2008). Best Practices for Designing and Grading Exams, CRLT Occasional Paper # 24.

Web resources

• Designing Effective Writing Assignments  (Teaching with Writing Program - UMNTC ) 
• Writing Assignment Checklist (Teaching with Writing Program - UMNTC)
• Designing and Using Rubrics (Center for Writing - UMTC)
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Rethinking educational assessments: the matrimony of exams and coursework

Standardised tests have been cemented in education systems across the globe, but whether or not they are a better assessment of students’ ability compared to coursework still divides opinions.

Proponents of exam assessments argue that despite being stressful, exams are beneficial for many reasons, such as:

• Provides motivation to study;
• Results are a good measure of the student’s work and understanding (and not anyone else’s); and
• They are a fair way of assessing students’ knowledge of a topic and encourage thinking in answering questions that everyone else is also taking.

But the latter may not be entirely true. A  Stanford study says question format can impact how boys and girls score on standardised tests. Researchers found that girls perform better on standardised tests that have more open-ended questions, while boys score higher when the tests include more multiple-choice questions.

Meanwhile, The Hechinger Report notes that assessments, when designed properly, can support, not just measure, student learning, building their skills and granting them the feedback they need.

“Assessments create feedback for teachers and students alike, and the high value of feedback – particularly timely feedback – is well-documented by learning scientists. It’s useful to know you’re doing something wrong right after you do it,” it said.

Exams are important for students, but they must be designed properly to ensure they support student learning. Source: Shutterstock

Conversely, critics of exams say the obsession with test scores comes at the expense of learning – students memorise facts, while some syllabi lack emphasis of knowledge application and does little to develop students’ critical thinking skills.

Meanwhile, teachers have argued that report card grades aren’t the best way to measure a student’s academic achievement , adding that they measure effort more than achievement.

Coursework, on the other hand, assesses a wider range of skills – it can consist of a range of activities such as quizzes, class participation, assignments and presentations. These steady assessments over an academic year suggests there is fair representation of students’ educational attainment while also catering for different learning styles.

Quizzes can be useful as they keep students on their toes and encourages them to study consistently, while giving educators a yardstick as to how well students are faring. Group work, however, can open up a can of worms when lazy students latch on to hard-working peers to pull up their grades, or when work is unevenly distributed among teammates.

It becomes clear that exams and coursework clearly test students’ different ‘muscles’, but do they supplement and support students’ learning outcomes and develop students as a whole?

The shifting tides

Coursework can develop skills such as collaboration and critical thinking among students, which exams cannot. Source: Shutterstock

News reports suggest that some countries are gradually moving away from an exam-oriented education system; these include selected schools in the US and Asian countries.

Last year, Malaysia’s Education Minister, Dr Maszlee Malik, said students from Year One to Three will no longer sit for exams come 2019, enabling the ministry to implement the Classroom-Based Assessment (PBD), in which they can focus on a pupil’s learning development.

Meanwhile, Singapore is cutting down on the number of exams for selected primary and secondary school levels, while Georgia’s school graduate exams will be abolished from 2020. Finland is a country known for not having standardised tests, with the exception of one exam at the end of students’ secondary school year.

Drawing from my experience, I found that a less exam-oriented system greatly benefitted me.

Going through 11 years of the Malaysian national education system was a testament that I did not perform well in an exam-oriented environment. I was often ‘first from the bottom’ in class, which did little to boost my confidence in school.

For university, I set out to select a programme that was less exam-oriented and eventually chose the American Degree Programme (ADP), while many of my schoolmates went with the popular A-Levels before progressing to their degree.

With the ADP, the bulk of student assessments (about 70 percent, depending on your institution) came from assignments, quizzes, class participation, presentations and the like, while the remaining 30 percent was via exams. Under this system, I found myself flourishing for the first time in an academic setting – my grades improved, I was more motivated to attend my classes and learned that I wasn’t as stupid as I was often made out to be during my school days.

This system of continuous assessments worked more in my favour than the stress of sitting for one major exam. In the former, my success or failure in an educational setting was not entirely dependent on how well I could pass standardised tests that required me to regurgitate facts through essays and open-ended or multiple choice questions.

Instead, I had more time to grasp new and alien concepts, and through activities that promoted continuous development, was able to digest and understand better.

Mixed assessments in schools and universities can be beneficial for developing well-rounded individuals. Source: Shutterstock

Additionally, shy students such as myself are forced between a rock and a hard place – to contribute to class discussions or get a zero for class participation, and to engage in group and solo presentations or risk getting zero for oral presentations.

One benefit to this system is that it gives you the chance to play to your strengths and work hard towards securing top marks in areas you care about. If you preferred the  examination or assignments portion, for example, you could knock it out of the park in those areas to pull up your grades.

Some students may be all-rounders who perform well in both exam-oriented and coursework assessments, but not all students say the same. However, the availability of mixed assessments in schools and universities can be beneficial for developing well-rounded individuals.

Under this system, students who perform poorly in exams will still have to go through them anyway, while students who excel in exam-oriented conditions are also forced to undergo other forms of assessments and develop their skill sets, including creativity, collaboration, oral and critical thinking skills.

Students who argue that their grades will fall under mixed-assessments should rethink the purpose of their education – in most instances, degrees aim to prepare people for employment.

But can exams really prepare students for employment where they’ll be working with people with different skills, requiring them to apply critical thinking and communication skills over a period of time to ensure work is completed within stipulated deadlines, despite hiccups that can happen between the start and finishing line of a project?

It’ll help if parents, educators and policymakers are on the bandwagon, too, instead of merely chasing for children and students to obtain a string of As.  

Grades hold so much power over students’ futures – from the ability to get an academic scholarship to gaining entry to prestigious institutions – and this means it can be difficult to get students who prefer one mode of assessment to convert to one that may potentially negatively affect their grades.

Ideally, education shouldn’t be about pitting one student against the other; it should be based on attaining knowledge and developing skills that will help students in their future careers and make positive contributions to the world.

Exams are still a crucial part of education as some careers depend on a student’s academic attainment (i.e. doctors, etc.). But rather than having one form of assessment over the other, matrimony between the two may help develop holistic students and better prepare them for the world they’ll soon be walking into.

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Are Exams the Best Way to Test Students?

28 November 2022

8 minutes to read

• 01. Are Exams Effective?
• 02. What are the Pros and Cons of Traditional Exams?
• 03. Are There Alternatives to Standardised Testing?

"Success doesn't come to you, you got to it." -Marva Collins

Striving for and achieving academic success is the by-product of hard work, determination, and resilience. Students dedicate hours to studying for exams and sacrifice many things so that they can please their parents and be proud of themselves. To measure success, examinations are presented to students from a primary level to a university stage; that's the way it's always been done.

Exams are a very effective tool for doing thorough knowledge checks. It illustrates how the kids' learning has progressed. Exam uniformity, then, standardizes student learning in terms of interests, aptitudes, and knowledge. This guarantees a uniform or standard method of evaluating several people.

Given the volume of students that go through secondary school education across the UK, standardised to uniform assessments are certainly a viable method of testing. Though the question remains whether they are the most effective method that we could employ within our schools. There are certainly a few issues that come to mind when we think about uniform tests.

They don't evaluate intelligence; they just test our recollection. The current exam does not in any way aid in determining a student's genuine worth; instead, it places undue stress on pupils and encourages the practice of "mugging up." Depending on the student's abilities, the grades could be assigned.

It's worth mentioning that recently, many educators and experts in the education sector have been wondering if standardised examinations are still the most effective way to determine the student's intelligence and their comprehension of the course material. Multiple intelligences theories and alternative testing methods have been introduced in more progressive schools across the United Kingdom to much success.

So, the question arises, are exams the best way to test students? Let's discover the answer in today's article!

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Are Exams Effective?

Exams cannot determine whether a person has actually learned a certain concept. The sensitive and microscopic nature of examination does not correspond to how we apply knowledge and intellect in the actual world. Exams mostly focus on testing memorization, not analysis, creativity, or true comprehension.

For many, the uniformity required by exams standardises and negatively impacts the interests, capabilities and knowledge absorbed by students and children. This process of mass standardisation takes away the uniqueness and curiosity of learning that contributes to the growth of well-rounded, critical thinkers that are necessary for the 21st century.

While exams do tend to make students work hard, that doesn't always positively impact learning. For example, the way that exams are structured means that to yield good results, students are required to memorise information and regurgitate it onto exam papers but do not necessarily understand what they are learning.

Also, preparing for exams rarely gives students the time to absorb the information they are studying, which begs the question – does our education system prioritise the comprehension of knowledge or test results?

Whether exams and standardised tests are effective or not, greatly depends on who you ask. Why's that? There are pros and cons to traditional exams and that's why they're still lingering around up to this day.

What are the Pros and Cons of Traditional Exams?

According to studies, persons who are relatively uninformed about a subject have a tendency to overestimate their aptitude compared to those who are more knowledgeable.

In essence, those with less knowledge are unaware of their ignorance. This phenomenon, known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, explains why students frequently lack the motivation to work hard unless we can demonstrate to them through testing what they are missing out on.

In the United Kingdom, and around the world, standardised tests have become the normalised method to determine academic excellence within our education system. However, is exams really the paramount way to test students? Do end-of-year examinations require students to remember and understand the content of their studies?

The Advantages of Traditional Test Taking

To arrive at an effective conclusion, it's necessary for parents, teachers, and education officials to consider both the benefits and the drawbacks of standardised testing. The following are three of the most noteworthy reasons why students of all ages should continue taking traditional exams:

• They Hold Teachers and Students Accountable: schools and education boards need reliable data to evaluate students' progress and see whether the teachers are sticking close to the structure of the curriculum. Once completed and handed in, standardised examinations let exam boards quickly see whether or not learning objectives are being accomplished. Benchmarks allow education officials to see where some schools have strayed and how things could be improved.
• They are Extremely Efficient:  instead of creating a unique exam for each student based on their learning conditions and specific talents, standardized exams try to include elementary and advanced aspects of the curriculum to collectively test students on what they know and what they reviewed in the school year. Also, for exam boards, standardised tests are evaluated by machines which makes correcting less costly and time-consuming. Through traditional and regulated examinations, the UK Education System is given a big picture of the state of education and how students on average are performing.
• All pupils can access the same and equivalent content in uniform assessments. This implies that a thorough assessment of all students from an equal viewpoint is possible. The use of alternative examinations or the exemption of kids from taking standardized tests leads to unfair systems, which subsequently result in a set of students who are held accountable for their performance and a different group of students who are not. It is a system in which each child is viewed equally.
• They Encourage Positive Learning Methods: throughout the entire school year, students understand that they will have an examination at the end of the year that they need to do well on. Therefore, teachers encourage pupils to study diligently, stay organised and assimilate the course material; which are all great study habits.

While there are many more pros to standardised testing such as consistency and clarity, it's worth stating that the three previously mentioned reasons are constantly brought up in defence of traditional test taking.

The Disadvantages of Uniform Tests

Over the past decade or so, the appreciation and admiration for standardised testing have declined and many educators are rebelling against the idea of keeping uniform tests at UK-based schools. Why? There are a plethora of possible answers, but the following are the most talked about cons of standardised testing:

• They Don't Take into Account Individual Intelligence:  most educators, parents, and students would agree that standardised tests are too cookie-cutter and uniform for today's modern world. Exams do not take into account that intelligence is a spectrum, not static. For example, students who do not do well under exam conditions are branded as ‘less intelligent than those who achieve higher exam results which cause many to become dissatisfied and discouraged with the school. Exams leave no room for students with different intellects and instead of letting them grow differently, they try to force them into conformity.
• Students that are savvy can guess what questions will appear on a uniform test since they often use just a small number of potential questions in order to achieve fairness throughout each subsequent year of teaching. This predictability is a reflection of the inherent human bias present in every action or response we make in any situation. Additionally, it implies that exam results don't always reflect students' comprehension.
• They assume that all pupils begin with the same level of comprehension. Uniform tests might make it possible to compare data directly, but they don't take into consideration the individual students who take the examinations. Because they presuppose that the student speaks English as a first language, standardized tests in the UK could be viewed as discriminatory in some areas. Students with special needs, learning disabilities, or other difficulties that are handled by an individualized education plan may also do worse on standardized tests than students without such issues.
• They are a HUGE Source of Stress:  not only for students but also for teachers, end-of-year exams are a massive source of stress that cause sleepless nights and severe bouts of anxiety . Stress causes pupils to underperform on tests and this reflects poorly on the educator and the exam board; so, everyone loses!

Unfortunately, it's sad to say that there are even more downsides than the previously mentioned three that have proven to affect children going through exams. So, what can be done to revitalise learning and prevent students from becoming mass-produced test-takers that don't assimilate any valuable information? Take a look at the testing alternatives in the following subheading.

Are There Alternatives to Standardised Testing?

Since a lot of parents, students and educators feel dissatisfied with the current examination methods used in primary and secondary schools across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, they are constantly searching for solutions. Some of the brightest students have fallen victim to our education system, many of them being told that they are not intelligent, which certainly wasn't the case.

Perhaps a more specialised system would make education more accessible and inclusive while producing better results.

However, many of us fall silent on what we can do to change it. We frequently find ourselves asking – are there any viable alternatives? Thankfully, there are a few viable testing possibilities that are being used to revamp the education system. Such as? Instead of standardised tests, some education enthusiasts have preferred the following options:

• Multiple Measures:  rather than solely depending on standardized testing, the "multiple measures" method encourages teachers to assess their students based on various projects that they are required to complete throughout the year. Such as? Some educators opt for group or solo presentations of work in front of the class while others prefer surveys and game-based assessments; the choice is the teachers!
• Portfolios:  instead of completing a series of tests at the end of the year, every time a student completes a group project, pop quiz, report, or oral presentation, teachers add this to the student's portfolio. By the end of the school year, the portfolio is quite expensive and this allows examiners to get a more "three-dimensional" picture of students' capabilities.
• Sampling:  one alternative form of testing that students, teachers, and governments are content with is known as sampling. In the most straightforward of definitions, sampling is described as testing a statistically representative group of students instead of each pupil. Though sampling doesn't eliminate standardized testing, it decreases the impact on students and teachers since not all are required to complete examinations. Sampling is much cheaper for education systems and it keeps learning more fun since tests are not the focal point of the teaching process.

In conclusion, change is vital to a healthy society, and right now, we desperately need it within our educational institutions. As we've seen in today's article, there are alternatives out there, but our government needs to be ready to actively facilitate change and integrate new assessment methods into the UK education system before it's too late for modern-day learners.

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Brentyn Herda

Avid movie-goer, reader, skier and language learner. Passionate about life, food and travelling.

Frequently asked questions

What are the advantages of standardised tests.

Through standardised assessments, exam boards are provided with a bigger picture of how students are performing and where there’s a need for improvement. Also, tests across the board promote equality.

What are the disadvantages of standardised tests?

In most cases, standardised tests cause a lot of frustration and stress for the student. Also, students begin to learn course material just to pass exams and not for fun.

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You lost me at “Exams cannot determine whether a person has actually learned a certain concept. The sensitive and microscopic nature of examination does not correspond to how we apply knowledge and intellect in the actual world.”. If that really is how exams in schools are now, it’s different to when I was doing them in the 80s. Exams, certainly in many subjects where the knowledge _can_ be applied, should be testing the understanding through questions that require the examinee to apply the knowledge they’ve learned to a practical (albeit, in most cases, contrived) problem.

For example, a maths question would not ask “state Pythoagoras’ theorem”, which is a question that is purely testing recollection. An exam question _should_ ask for an answer where the student needs to understand that, to achieve the answer, they’d need to first work out that the application of Pythagoras’ theorem is how they will get there, and then to apply Pythagoras’ theorem in the correct way. This is why you (at least we, when I was doing exams) were told to write down _all_ of our working because, even if you get the answer wrong, there are marks allocated for showing that you understood the way to get to the answer.

Obviously, in some subjects, there will be situations where exams may only be able to evaluate your ability to retain information; although I only did French at school, I suspect many language courses are a bit like that, however applying that statement about exams to all subjects is incorrect.

I agree that exams, for some (possibly many) people, are not the best way to evaluate their knowledge and understanding; at least one of my children, my wife, and my sister have all suffered from the stress that exams place on people and achieved sub-optimal results, however they certainly still have value since “continuous assessment” can have the opposite problem in that, by assessing subjects in small chunks, you run the risk of failing to evaluate the ability to retain information long-term. Long-term information retention is a valuable and important skill, in many walks of life.

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Are tests a good way to measure students’ knowledge?

By Nate Smith | Broadcast Reporter

As a college student, tests can dominate your entire education experience. They probably should, considering the fact that they can sometimes account for half of your entire grade. Since we spend all of this time studying for, stressing about and taking tests, I think we should ask ourselves the question: Are tests actually a good way to measure a student’s knowledge?

Personally, I think that they are a great way to measure a student’s knowledge, but only at the time when the test is taken. Think about it: how often do you have cram-sessions in hopes of memorizing all of the necessary material in the days leading up to a test, only to “brain dump” all of the things that you learned the second after you turn in the exam?

If you’re anything like me, you probably do it pretty often. That’s a great strategy if you want nothing more than a solid test grade, but it is not a great way to ensure that you retain the information that you’ve spent hours studying. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, but we should care about the knowledge we obtain more than we care about our grade, not the other way around.

As much as you can blame the student for having their priorities twisted, you also have to blame the practice of giving tests itself. When taking a test, a student has no incentive to do anything outside of what is necessary to ensure that their desired grade is made. With that in mind, shouldn’t instructors be encouraged to use practices to measure students’ knowledge that makes them want to learn the information in such a way that they will actually retain it?

I think that should be the case, and there are virtually an endless amount of ways that you can measure a student’s knowledge.

One of the more popular ways to do this is by assigning essays. I know, most of us let out a massive groan every time that we hear that we have been assigned an essay. However, I think that this is a great way to measure what a student knows while ensuring that they actually become relatively knowledgeable in the topic at hand. On top of being a surefire way to make sure that students retain a large amount of what they’ve learned, it is also very efficient. When you write an essay, you’re not spending hours upon hours pouring over a textbook like you would before a test. Instead you’re spending maybe an hour or two gathering the information necessary to write the essay before expanding on that information using your own original thoughts. What better way to make a concept stick with a student than making them think and write about those concepts critically?

Another tried and true way to evaluate student’s knowledge in this way is with a presentation. When you hear presentation, your mind probably jumps to the boring PowerPoint presentations that you had to sit through during your ninth grade world history class. While this certainly is one mode of presentation, there are a variety of other ways you can have students present information, such as video presentations or speeches. These are not only ways that allow students to use their creative side to absorb and display information, but the change of pace that comes from hearing information coming from one of your peers can also do wonders for the audience when done properly.

Now, those are only a couple of different ways that you can evaluate a student’s knowledge without testing, but I think that they sufficiently got my point across. Everyone has their own unique set of talents and weaknesses, and students are no different. It is time that we start treating them as such.

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Evaluations: Do Exams Evaluate Students Correctly?

Why Exams May Not Be the Best Way to Assess Student Learning: Exploring Alternative Assessments

Assessments play a critical role in the education system. They help to evaluate student learning outcomes, guide instructional decisions, and measure the effectiveness of teaching methods. Traditional exams have been the primary form of assessment for decades, but there is growing concern that they may not be the best way to assess student potential. In this article, we will explore the drawbacks of using exams as the primary form of assessment and discuss alternative assessment methods that can be used to better evaluate student potential and improve learning outcomes.

The Drawbacks of Using Exams as the Primary Form of Assessment

Traditional exams have several limitations that can impede their ability to accurately measure student learning outcomes. One of the most significant drawbacks of exams is that they are often focused on memorization and recall rather than critical thinking and problem-solving skills. This means that students may be able to pass an exam without truly understanding the material or being able to apply it in real-world situations.

Exams also tend to be a high-pressure environment that can create stress and anxiety for students. This can lead to students underperforming, even if they have a good understanding of the material. Additionally, exams can be biased towards certain types of learners. Students who struggle with test-taking or have test anxiety may perform poorly on exams, even if they have a good understanding of the material.

Finally, exams only provide a snapshot of a student's knowledge at a particular moment in time. They do not account for a student's growth and development over time, which can lead to an incomplete picture of a student's potential.

Alternative Assessment Methods

Alternative assessment methods are designed to address the limitations of traditional exams by providing a more comprehensive evaluation of student learning outcomes. Some examples of alternative assessments include:

Project-based assessments:

In project-based assessments, students work on a long-term project that requires them to apply their knowledge and skills to a real-world problem. This type of assessment allows students to demonstrate their critical thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as their ability to apply knowledge in real-world situations.

Performance assessments:

Performance assessments require students to demonstrate their skills and knowledge through a task or activity. This could include anything from giving a presentation to conducting a science experiment. Performance assessments provide a more authentic evaluation of a student's abilities and can be less stressful than traditional exams.

Portfolios:

Portfolios are collections of student work that demonstrate their progress and growth over time. Portfolios can include a range of materials, including essays, projects, and other assignments. Portfolios allow for a more comprehensive evaluation of student learning outcomes and provide a more complete picture of a student's potential.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Alternative Assessments

Alternative assessments offer several advantages over traditional exams. They provide a more comprehensive evaluation of student learning outcomes, allow for a more authentic evaluation of a student's abilities, and can be less stressful for students. Additionally, alternative assessments can help to promote student engagement and motivation, as students are often more invested in projects and activities that allow them to demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

However, alternative assessments also have some disadvantages. They can be more time-consuming and resource-intensive to administer than traditional exams. Additionally, there can be a lack of standardization in alternative assessments, which can make it difficult to compare student outcomes across different schools or districts.

Can We Improve Learning Outcomes by Replacing Exams with Alternative Assessments?

Research suggests that alternative assessments can be effective in improving student learning outcomes. According to a study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, students who were tested using alternative methods, such as project-based assessments, performed better than those who were tested using traditional exams. In a survey of educators conducted by Edutopia, 76% of respondents said that they believed alternative assessments, such as portfolios and performances, were better indicators of student learning than traditional exams. Furthermore, a case study conducted by the New York Performance Standards Consortium, a group of public high schools, showed that replacing traditional exams with performance-based assessments led to a significant improvement in student learning outcomes.

Alternative assessments can also provide a more comprehensive picture of a student's abilities and potential. While traditional exams tend to focus on memorization and recall, alternative assessments can evaluate a student's critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity skills. For example, a student who struggles with test-taking may perform poorly on a traditional exam but may excel when given the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge through a project or presentation.

However, alternative assessments are not without their limitations. They can be more time-consuming and resource-intensive to design and implement compared to traditional exams. Furthermore, grading and evaluating alternative assessments can be subjective and may require more training and expertise from educators.

Despite these limitations, the current debate around replacing exams with alternative assessments is gaining traction among educators and policymakers. The shift towards alternative assessments reflects a growing recognition that traditional exams may not be the best way to evaluate student learning outcomes and potential.

Educators and researchers have called for a more holistic approach to assessment that considers a range of factors beyond just test scores. This includes evaluating a student's progress over time, taking into account their personal and cultural background, and providing opportunities for self-reflection and feedback.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, while traditional exams have long been the primary form of assessment in education, they have limitations that can affect student learning outcomes and potential. Alternative assessments, such as project-based assessments, portfolios, and performances, can provide a more comprehensive and effective way to evaluate student learning. While there are challenges to implementing alternative assessments, the current debate around their use reflects a growing recognition of the need for a more holistic approach to assessment that considers a range of factors beyond just test scores.

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Preparing Tests and Exams

While we often think of exams as a way to test students’ comprehension of material, exams can serve more than one purpose. Being aware of why we are testing students and what exactly we want to test can help make students’ and instructors' experience of exams more useful. The following tips will gear you towards issues you should think about during the entire exam process, from planning to reflection. 

Before you start preparing an exam

Why are you giving an exam to your students.

• To evaluate and grade students.  Exams provide a controlled environment for independent work and so are often used to verify students’ learning.
• To motivate students to study.  Students tend to open their books more often when an evaluation is coming up. Exams can be great motivators.
• To add variety to student learning.  Exams are a form of learning activity. They can enable students to see the material from a different perspective. They also provide feedback that students can then use to improve their understanding.
• To identify weaknesses and correct them.  Exams enable both students and instructors to identify which areas of the material students do not understand. This allows students to seek help, and instructors to address areas that may need more attention, thus enabling student progression and improvement.
• To obtain feedback on your teaching.  You can use exams to evaluate your own teaching. Students’ performance on the exam will pinpoint areas where you should spend more time or change your current approach.
• To provide statistics for the course or institution.  Institutions often want information on how students are doing. How many are passing and failing, and what is the average achievement in class? Exams can provide this information.
• To accredit qualified students.  Certain professions demand that students demonstrate the acquisition of certain skills or knowledge. An exam can provide such proof – for example, the Uniform Final Examination (UFE) serves this purpose in accounting.

What do you want to assess?

What you want to assess should be related to your learning outcomes for the course.

• Knowledge or how it is used.  You can design your test questions to assess students’ knowledge or ability to apply material taught in class.
• Process or product.  You can test students’ reasoning skills and evaluate the process by focusing the marks and other feedback on the process they follow to arrive at a solution. Alternatively, you can evaluate the end product.
• The communication of ideas.  You can evaluate students’ communication skills ­their ability to express themselves - whether this is by writing a cogent argument, or creating an elegant mathematical proof.
• Convergent thinking or divergent thinking.  You can test your students’ ability to draw a single conclusion from different inputs (convergent thinking). Or you may alternatively want them to come up with different possible answers (divergent thinking). Do you expect different answers from students, or do you expect all of them to provide the same answer?
• Absolute or relative standards.  Is student success defined by learning a set amount of material or demonstrating certain skills, or is student success measured by assessing the amount of progress the students make over the duration of the course?

How do you decide what to test and how to test it?

The overall exam should be consistent with your learning outcomes for the course. There are a number of ways to review and prioritize the skills and concepts taught in a course. You could:

• Use the topics list provided in your course outline
• Skim through your lecture notes to find key concepts and methods
• Review chapter headings and subheadings in the assigned readings

What are the qualities of a good exam?

• A good exam gives all students an equal opportunity to fully demonstrate their learning . With this in mind, you might reflect on the nature and parameters of your exam. For example, could the exam be administered as a take-home exam? Two students might know the material equally well, but one of them might not perform well under the pressure of a timed or in-class testing situation. In such a case, what is it that you really want to assess: how well each student knows the material, or how well each performs under pressure? Likewise, it might be appropriate to allow students to bring memory aids to an exam. Again, what is it that you want to assess: their ability to memorize a formula or their ability to use and apply a formula?
• Consistency.  If you give the same exam twice to the same students, they should get a similar grade each time.
• Validity.  Make sure your questions address what you want to evaluate.
• Realistic expectations.  Your exam should contain questions that match the average student’s ability level. It should also be possible to respond to all questions in the time allowed. To check the exam, ask a teaching assistant to take the test – if they can’t complete it in well under the time permitted then the exam needs to be revised.
• Uses multiple question types.  Different students are better at different types of questions. In order to allow all students to demonstrate their abilities, exams should include a variety of types of questions. Read our Teaching Tip,  Asking Questions: 6 Types .
• Offer multiple ways to obtain full marks.  Exams can be highly stressful and artificial ways to demonstrate knowledge. In recognition of this, you may want to provide questions that allow multiple ways to obtain full marks. For example, ask students to list five of the seven benefits of multiple-choice questions.
• Free of bias.  Your students will differ in many ways including language proficiency, socio-economic background, physical disabilities, etc. When constructing an exam, you should keep student differences in mind to watch for ways that the exams could create obstacles for some students. For example, the use of colloquial language could create difficulties for students whose first language is not English, and examples easily understood by North American students may be inaccessible to international students.
• Redeemable.  An exam does not need to be the sole opportunity to obtain marks. Assignments and midterms allow students to practice answering your types of questions and adapt to your expectations.
• Demanding.  An exam that is too easy does not accurately measure students’ understanding of the material.
• Transparent marking criteria.  Students should know what is expected of them. They should be able to identify the characteristics of a satisfactory answer and understand the relative importance of those characteristics. This can be achieved in many ways; you can provide feedback on assignments, describe your expectations in class, or post model solutions.
• Timely.  Spread exams out over the semester. Giving two exams one week apart doesn’t give students adequate time to receive and respond to the feedback provided by the first exam. When possible, plan the exams to fit logically within the flow of the course material. It might be helpful to place tests at the end of important learning units rather than simply give a midterm halfway through the semester. 
• Accessible . For students with disabilities, exams must be amenable to adaptive technologies such as screen-readers or screen magnifiers. Exams that have visual content, such as charts, maps, and illustrations, may need to be rendered by Waterloo's  AccessAbility Services  into a format that meets an accommodation. 

After the exam is ready

Prepare a marking scheme or rubric.

Preparing a marking scheme ahead of time will allow you to review your questions, to verify that they are really testing the material you want to test, and to think about possible alternative answers that might come up.

• Look at what others have done.  Chances are that you are not the only person who teaches this course. Look at how others choose to assign grades.
• Make a marking scheme usable by non-experts . Write a model answer and use this as the basis for a marking scheme usable by non-experts. This ensures that your teaching assistants and your students can easily understand your marking scheme. It also allows you to have an external examiner mark the response, if need be. A  rubric  can be an effective tool to help you or your teaching assistants assess student work quickly and accurately. Sharing the rubric with your students as they begin to study for the exam is also a good idea. 
• Give consequential marks.  Generally, marking schemes should not penalize the same error repeatedly. If an error is made early but carried through the answer, you should only penalize it once if the rest of the response is sound.
• Review the marking scheme after the exam.  Once the exam has been written, read a few answers and review your key. You may sometimes find that students have interpreted your question in a way that is different from what you had intended. Students may come up with excellent answers that may be slightly outside of what was asked. Consider giving these students partial marks.
• When marking, make notes on exams.  These notes should make it clear why you gave a particular mark. If exams are returned to the students, your notes will help them understand their mistakes and correct them. They will also help you should students want to review their exam long after it has been given, or if they appeal their grade.

Inform students of the purpose and parameters of the exam

• Clearly communicate with students about what your goals are for any test or exam.  Don't assume that students know what the pedagogical purpose of the test or exam is.  Have a discussion about your goals and desired outcomes, and help students understand how specific aspects of the test or exam fit these goals.  Be open to making some changes if students have ideas to offer. 
• Point out the important sections in course plans, textbooks, and readings to guide test and exam preparation; where possible, provide multiple samples of tests and exam questions and answers. Consider conducting an  exam review exercise .
• What will the exam cover?
• How much emphasis should I put on the textbook / lectures / etc…?
• What material (if any) am I allowed to bring into the exam room?
• When will I get my mark?
• What happens if, for a good reason, I can’t attend the exam? Do I get to re-write?
• Will I be given the chance to choose the topics on which I do questions?
• Will I be told which criteria I am being assessed on?
• If I disagree politically or philosophically with the marker, will I get poor marks?
• Will allowances be made if English is not my first language?

After your students write the exam

Monitor the quality of your exams.

Exams provide you with the opportunity to obtain feedback on student learning, your teaching methods, and the quality of the exam itself.

• Write impressions on your exam and keep them.  During the exam and the marking of the exam, keep track of which questions seem to be well understood, and which questions were frequently misunderstood.
• Collect numerical data.  If you have machine-scorable exams, you can get statistics on your questions, such as which questions were missed most often or which distracters were most often chosen. In other cases you can collect an overview of the marks.
• Get student feedback.  You can leave space specifically for feedback on exams, or you can obtain feedback in class after the exam. Consider asking your students to complete an exam wrapper – a short survey asking students about exam preparation strategies they used, what questions they found difficult to answer, and what they might do differently to prepare for the next exam (see our Teaching Tip on  Teaching Metacognitive Skills ).

Reflect on the gathered information

Reviewing examination results can help you identify concepts and methods that students are having difficulty with – questions that were missed – as well as concepts and methods that were well understood – questions generally successfully answered. Or it may highlight well-constructed or poorly ­constructed exam question. Consider using this information to:

• Change how you teach the remainder of the term
• Check for improvement on specific topics or methods over a term
• Redesign the course or the examination for future classes
• Assess your teaching practice – what is working especially well and what can be improved upon

If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching, CTE staff members are here to help.  View the  CTE Support  page to find the most relevant staff member to contact.

• Brown, S., Race, P., & Smith, B. (1996).  500 tips on assessment . London, UK: Kogan Page.
• Brown, S., & Smith, B. (1997).  Getting to grips with assessment . Birmingham, UK: staff and Educational Development Association.
• McKeachie, W., & Svinicki, M. (2013).  McKeachie's teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (14 th  ed.) . Belmont, USA: Wadsworth Publishing.
• Worthen, B. R., Borg, W.R., & White, K. R. (1993).  Measurement and evaluation in the schools.  New York: Longman.

CTE teaching tips

• Exam Questions: Types, Characteristics, and Suggestions
• Designing Multiple-Choice Questions
• Aligning Outcomes, Assessments, and Instruction
• Learner-Centered Assessment

Catalog search

Teaching tip categories.

• Assessment and feedback
• Blended Learning and Educational Technologies
• Career Development
• Course Design
• Course Implementation
• Inclusive Teaching and Learning
• Learning activities
• Support for Student Learning
• Support for TAs
• Assessment and feedback ,

Timed, Standardized-Testing: Is It Worth It?

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Rows of single-seat desks populate the room. The silent reminder of possible learning from a year’s worth of classes languish after the necessary strip search to sterilize the environment. There are remnants of student personality scantily hung about the room and textbooks returned, possibly never opened.

Overall, it’s a sad and anxious space, but students are forced to live among the stark debris for hours at a clip, somewhat against their wills.

The quiet is palpable except for the sound of the teacher reading the exam to the students. The room that I’m proctoring is an extended time room and most of the children taking the English exam are not native English speakers. They are permitted dictionaries and having the test read, but that certainly doesn’t ensure their comprehension of or capacity for success on the exam.

New York States Regents week began this week and as I patrolled my proctor-assigned room, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Is it worth it?” or the better question, “Is this fair?” or even still, “What does this actually prove?”

Regent exams like many state exams are written by people outside of the schools and are deemed necessary for completion in certain content areas for high school graduation in New York. Given the diversity of learners in our system, particularly those students in the NYC DOE, the test shows a bias that unfairly favors those who speak, read and understand English better than the vast majority of students.

Although I agree that student learning must be assessed, I’m not convinced that a state-mandated, standardized, timed exam fairly assesses the skills and levels of all learners. There is cultural bias as well that makes the test additionally challenging for students who are new to the system from other countries and/or other systems. And it’s not just the English exam, it’s all of them.

Back in the room I spent a fraction of the testing time in (the students all received double time—a whopping six hours), a student anxiously kept asking about how much time was left as some of her classmates began to finish their tests. The time count was on the board and I had just finished reading everything.

An audible sigh from the same girl and then she muttered, “I didn’t get to finish my essay yesterday. I had to finish two and there wasn’t enough time.”

She was trying, but there was too much for her to do to decode what she was reading in English before she could even get to what the test was assessing about history.

Some of these students arrive in the United States what seems like minutes before they are required to take these tests. How fair is that? Imagine taking a test in a language you barely understand only a short time after you arrive in that place. Aside from feeling completely lost, what would that do for your willingness to keep pushing forward?

And there are too many students in this predicament!

When we were offering January Regents, I was a part of a tutoring group right before the exam and some of the students who were showing up barely spoke English; one couldn’t even ask for help in English. Feeling really concerned, I turned to a colleague confused and asked why this young lady had to take the test when she clearly didn’t speak any English. “That’s just the way that it is; everyone who is in the cohort has to take it.”

As we survive the current accountability and testing culture that exists in many big systems in the United States, we must continue to press for reform in assessment that treats children the way they deserve to be treated, like individual learners. Although I can agree that we need to have common standards and a solid idea of what mastery work looks like, we need to also accept that it can come in many shapes and sizes.

It’s time for us to think about assessing learning the same way we teach diverse and divergent learners, with a level of personalization and humanity that allows each learner to show what they know in a meaningful ways. People will say that portfolio assessment takes too much work and shows too much subjectivity, but I disagree. Every learner takes a different amount of time to produce his/her best work and the additional anxiety associated with being timed stymies that testing opportunity exponentially.

What we need to be asking is this: Who really profits from these tests and what is it actually doing? Do we learn anything about our students that can actually inform our practice for the future? In the many years I’ve been teaching, it has been rare that I’ve received anything more than scores on exams to inform future learning. And scores don’t tell me anything valuable.

How do you feel about timed, standardized testing? Is it time to dump it from education or should we keep doing it and why? Please share

The opinions expressed in Work in Progress are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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Writing Essays for Exams

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What is a well written answer to an essay question?

Well Focused

Be sure to answer the question completely, that is, answer all parts of the question. Avoid "padding." A lot of rambling and ranting is a sure sign that the writer doesn't really know what the right answer is and hopes that somehow, something in that overgrown jungle of words was the correct answer.

Well Organized

Don't write in a haphazard "think-as-you-go" manner. Do some planning and be sure that what you write has a clearly marked introduction which both states the point(s) you are going to make and also, if possible, how you are going to proceed. In addition, the essay should have a clearly indicated conclusion which summarizes the material covered and emphasizes your thesis or main point.

Well Supported

Do not just assert something is true, prove it. What facts, figures, examples, tests, etc. prove your point? In many cases, the difference between an A and a B as a grade is due to the effective use of supporting evidence.

Well Packaged

People who do not use conventions of language are thought of by their readers as less competent and less educated. If you need help with these or other writing skills, come to the Writing Lab

How do you write an effective essay exam?

• Read through all the questions carefully.
• Budget your time and decide which question(s) you will answer first.
• Underline the key word(s) which tell you what to do for each question.
• Choose an organizational pattern appropriate for each key word and plan your answers on scratch paper or in the margins.
• Write your answers as quickly and as legibly as you can; do not take the time to recopy.
• Begin each answer with one or two sentence thesis which summarizes your answer. If possible, phrase the statement so that it rephrases the question's essential terms into a statement (which therefore directly answers the essay question).
• Support your thesis with specific references to the material you have studied.
• Proofread your answer and correct errors in spelling and mechanics.

Specific organizational patterns and "key words"

Most essay questions will have one or more "key words" that indicate which organizational pattern you should use in your answer. The six most common organizational patterns for essay exams are definition, analysis, cause and effect, comparison/contrast, process analysis, and thesis-support.

Typical questions

• "Define X."
• "What is an X?"
• "Choose N terms from the following list and define them."

Q: "What is a fanzine?"

A: A fanzine is a magazine written, mimeographed, and distributed by and for science fiction or comic strip enthusiasts.

Avoid constructions such as "An encounter group is where ..." and "General semantics is when ... ."

• State the term to be defined.
• State the class of objects or concepts to which the term belongs.
• Differentiate the term from other members of the class by listing the term's distinguishing characteristics.

Tools you can use

• Details which describe the term
• Examples and incidents
• Comparisons to familiar terms
• Negation to state what the term is not
• Classification (i.e., break it down into parts)
• Examination of origins or causes
• Examination of results, effects, or uses

Analysis involves breaking something down into its components and discovering the parts that make up the whole.

• "Analyze X."
• "What are the components of X?"
• "What are the five different kinds of X?"
• "Discuss the different types of X."

Q: "Discuss the different services a junior college offers a community."

A: Thesis: A junior college offers the community at least three main types of educational services: vocational education for young people, continuing education for older people, and personal development for all individuals.

Outline for supporting details and examples. For example, if you were answering the example question, an outline might include:

• Vocational education
• Continuing education
• Personal development

Write the essay, describing each part or component and making transitions between each of your descriptions. Some useful transition words include:

• first, second, third, etc.
• in addition

Conclude the essay by emphasizing how each part you have described makes up the whole you have been asked to analyze.

Cause and Effect

Cause and effect involves tracing probable or known effects of a certain cause or examining one or more effects and discussing the reasonable or known cause(s).

Typical questions:

• "What are the causes of X?"
• "What led to X?"
• "Why did X occur?"
• "Why does X happen?"
• "What would be the effects of X?"

Q: "Define recession and discuss the probable effects a recession would have on today's society."

A: Thesis: A recession, which is a nationwide lull in business activity, would be detrimental to society in the following ways: it would .......A......., it would .......B......., and it would .......C....... .

The rest of the answer would explain, in some detail, the three effects: A, B, and C.

Useful transition words:

• consequently
• for this reason
• as a result

Comparison-Contrast

• "How does X differ from Y?"
• "Compare X and Y."
• "What are the advantages and disadvantages of X and Y?"

Q: "Which would you rather own—a compact car or a full-sized car?"

A: Thesis: I would own a compact car rather than a full-sized car for the following reasons: .......A......., .......B......., .......C......., and .......D....... .

Two patterns of development:

• Full-sized car

Disadvantages

• Compact car

Useful transition words

• on the other hand
• unlike A, B ...
• in the same way
• while both A and B are ..., only B ..
• nevertheless
• on the contrary
• while A is ..., B is ...
• "Describe how X is accomplished."
• "List the steps involved in X."
• "Explain what happened in X."
• "What is the procedure involved in X?"

Process (sometimes called process analysis)

This involves giving directions or telling the reader how to do something. It may involve discussing some complex procedure as a series of discrete steps. The organization is almost always chronological.

Q: "According to Richard Bolles' What Color Is Your Parachute?, what is the best procedure for finding a job?"

A: In What Color Is Your Parachute?, Richard Bolles lists seven steps that all job-hunters should follow: .....A....., .....B....., .....C....., .....D....., .....E....., .....F....., and .....G..... .

The remainder of the answer should discuss each of these seven steps in some detail.

• following this
• after, afterwards, after this
• subsequently
• simultaneously, concurrently

Thesis and Support

• "Discuss X."
• "A noted authority has said X. Do you agree or disagree?"
• "Defend or refute X."
• "Do you think that X is valid? Defend your position."

Thesis and support involves stating a clearly worded opinion or interpretation and then defending it with all the data, examples, facts, and so on that you can draw from the material you have studied.

Q: "Despite criticism, television is useful because it aids in the socializing process of our children."

A: Television hinders rather than helps in the socializing process of our children because .......A......., .......B......., and .......C....... .

The rest of the answer is devoted to developing arguments A, B, and C.

• it follows that

A. Which of the following two answers is the better one? Why?

Question: Discuss the contribution of William Morris to book design, using as an example his edition of the works of Chaucer.

a. William Morris's Chaucer was his masterpiece. It shows his interest in the Middle Ages. The type is based on medieval manuscript writing, and the decoration around the edges of the pages is like that used in medieval books. The large initial letters are typical of medieval design. Those letters were printed from woodcuts, which was the medieval way of printing. The illustrations were by Burn-Jones, one of the best artists in England at the time. Morris was able to get the most competent people to help him because he was so famous as a poet and a designer (the Morris chair) and wallpaper and other decorative items for the home. He designed the furnishings for his own home, which was widely admired among the sort of people he associated with. In this way he started the arts and crafts movement.

b. Morris's contribution to book design was to approach the problem as an artist or fine craftsman, rather than a mere printer who reproduced texts. He wanted to raise the standards of printing, which had fallen to a low point, by showing that truly beautiful books could be produced. His Chaucer was designed as a unified work of art or high craft. Since Chaucer lived in the Middle Ages, Morris decided to design a new type based on medieval script and to imitate the format of a medieval manuscript. This involved elaborate letters and large initials at the beginnings of verses, as well as wide borders of intertwined vines with leaves, fruit, and flowers in strong colors. The effect was so unusual that the book caused great excitement and inspired other printers to design beautiful rather than purely utilitarian books.

From James M. McCrimmon, Writing with a Purpose , 7th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980), pp. 261-263.

B. How would you plan the structure of the answers to these essay exam questions?

1. Was the X Act a continuation of earlier government policies or did it represent a departure from prior philosophies?

2. What seems to be the source of aggression in human beings? What can be done to lower the level of aggression in our society?

3. Choose one character from Novel X and, with specific references to the work, show how he or she functions as an "existential hero."

4. Define briefly the systems approach to business management. Illustrate how this differs from the traditional approach.

5. What is the cosmological argument? Does it prove that God exists?

6. Civil War historian Andy Bellum once wrote, "Blahblahblah blahed a blahblah, but of course if blahblah blahblahblahed the blah, then blahblahs are not blah but blahblah." To what extent and in what ways is the statement true? How is it false?

For more information on writing exam essays for the GED, please visit our Engagement area and go to the Community Writing and Education Station (CWEST) resources.

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Are standardized tests a fair way of evaluating students.

Ask any high school Senior going through the college admissions process how it’s going and they will all respond with the same answer: stressful. With emotions running high as one phase in their lives comes to an end, students are faced with a huge decision that will affect the rest of their lives.

The SAT and ACT are both high stake, stressful barriers to any student hoping to continue their education. Ironically, college admission officers have begun to doubt the accuracy and usefulness of these tests, and many colleges choose to no longer use these as a means of evaluation.

Au Wayne defined a test as “high stakes” when “its results are used to make important decisions that affect students.” Under this umbrella of tests falls the standardized ones used in the college admissions process.

Au Wayne’s study found that, other than simply causing severe anxiety, such tests have narrowed educational programs to focus solely on what the tests will cover, instead of cultivating a well-rounded curriculum that will allow students to learn the most and remember what they were taught. Wayne’s study brought forward the question: Are these tests helping or hurting us?

Unfortunately, not everyone learns the same material in high school, and often the test measures differences in educational background and family resources instead of the prospect for success in college. Some areas offer much better education than others, putting higher income students at an immediate advantage.

Higher income students also have access to more resources, such as student materials and private tutors, and are much more likely to have family members who have attended college and been through the testing process before.

As previously stated, the SAT and ACT are high stakes tests. Many students with learning disabilities, anxiety or attention disorders struggle while testing under such strenuous conditions. Although extra time is occasionally offered, it usually isn’t enough to make up for the difficulties these students have with high stakes testing.

There is also evidence that shows that standardized tests are racially biased. In the past year, the average SAT score for white students has remained the same, while the scores of African-American students have declined.

The average score for African American students trails that of white students, even in situations where both parties are of equal economic and academic backgrounds. All of the problems with standardized tests bring to light that the issue is with the tests themselves, not the students who are taking them.

Many other schools have moved to a test flexible policy for admissions. Testing can be expensive, and multiple attempts of the ACT or SAT is an expense that many families cannot afford. Instead of forcing students to retake the same test multiple times to get an ideal score, test flexible policies allow a variety of standardized test scores to support a student’s application.

One school with this policy, Colorado College, allows a student to pick three scores from a list of tests that the student thinks best represents his or her achievements. Other highly ranked schools that have similar test flexible policies include: Middlebury, Wake Forest, NYU and Drexel University.

Kelly Keglovits, UT Austin

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TOPIC: DO YOU THINK EXAMS ARE A GOOD WAY TO TEST STUDENTS?

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Trump Campaign Criticizes Walz for State Law Providing Tampons in Schools

The law, which was passed in Minnesota last year, includes language requiring menstrual products to be available in bathrooms of all schools for grades 4 to 12 as a way to accommodate transgender students.

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By Chris Cameron

• Published Aug. 6, 2024 Updated Aug. 9, 2024

As part of their effort to portray Tim Walz, the new Democratic vice-presidential candidate, as a far-left liberal, the Trump campaign attacked the Minnesota governor on Tuesday for signing a bill last year that provides access to menstrual products for transgender students.

At issue is broadly inclusive language in the law, which states that products like pads, tampons and other products used for menstruation “must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12.” Republican state lawmakers in Minnesota had tried — and failed — to amend that bill so that it would apply only to “female restrooms,” though some Republicans went on to vote for the final version of the bill .

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in an interview on Tuesday on Fox News that the law, among other policies seen as supportive of transgender rights, was “a threat to women’s health.”

“As a woman, I think there is no greater threat to our health than leaders who support gender-transition surgeries for young minors , who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools,” Ms. Leavitt said. “Those are radical policies that Tim Walz supports. He actually signed a bill to do that.”

State Representative Sandra Feist , a Democrat and the chief author of the bill, said in an interview that it was important for her and the student activists who pushed for the change that transgender students were able to access menstrual products without having to ask for them.

“I actually received emails,” Ms. Feist said. “From trans students, parents, teachers, librarians, custodians from across the country, talking about how they were — or that they knew — trans students who faced these barriers and needed these products, and how much it meant to them that they would have that access, and also that we were standing up for them.”

Mr. Walz made significant efforts to protect the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people in Minnesota as governor, and was an early supporter of gay rights going as far back as his time as a high school teacher in the 1990s. Mr. Walz signed a bill last year designating Minnesota as a legal refuge for transgender people.

Chris Cameron covers politics for The Times, focusing on breaking news and the 2024 campaign. More about Chris Cameron