(Page 253) “Some tests encourage teachers to race through content never slowing down to help students think deeply about the material, thus encouraging endless data bytes promptly forgotten once the test is over.”
Was anyone else given 20 vocabulary words every week in high school with the multiple choice test on Fridays to make sure you “learned” them? In the hundreds of words I was supposed to learn, I remember one: deluge. Or how many of us loved having the multiple choice and/or matching tests in classes so we could have a shot at getting the right answer so the teacher would at least think we knew something? The fact of the matter is we didn’t get to show any of our learning with those tests. (Hence the problem with Accelerated Reader tests…I would probably fail the tests on some of my favorite books, though I could write intelligently about them if given the opportunity.) Of course, having students write more on tests means they take longer to grade. And we have to grade them ourselves—there isn’t one right answer to where we could get an aide to grade them for us. But if they trade off is that we discover that student actually know something (or don’t know!), don’t you think it’s worth it? Of course, there is the whole issue that students have to take standardized multiple choice tests—EOC, HSAP, SAT, etc.—so they need have some practice with those as well. Maybe a combination approach is best? But if we think about it, in the “real world,” when do we ever take a multiple choice test? The only one I can think we ever take is for a driver’s permit. In the long run, is it better for student to bubble a correct answer or write intelligently on a particular topic?