Colleges above the need for standardized tests

I celebrated the last standardized test I thought I would ever take on my last day of high school in May of 2005. After taking three versions of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), the PSAT, the SATs, and several AP tests, I was blindly misguided in thinking that my entrance into college meant an end to filling in bubble sheets. I was wrong. Not only did I fail to consider tests like the LSATs, GRE, and GMATs as criteria for enrollment into graduate school, but I could not have possibly foreseen the suggestion of Margaret Spellings, the U.S. Secretary of Education, to use standardized testing in college in order to measure performance.

When Spellings suggested this last year, academia was appropriately outraged. Challenging institutions to decipher how much students were learning in order to publicize information about how graduates fared in the job market or graduate school took tests one step too far. Why exactly do we need a standardized test to figure out the success of students in the job market or graduate school? It seems to me that there are other ways of getting this information, such as conducting a survey after graduation or compiling a case study on the grades of students and how well they are doing in their classes.

As a member of the Bush administration, it is ironic that Spellings and the backers of the No Child Left Behind Act see standardized tests as such a reliable measurement of success - they seem to have forgotten about the poster child for SAT meaninglessness sitting in the Oval Office. George W. Bush was elected president of the United States, yet he scored a lackluster 1206 out of 1600 on the SATs. He out of all people should be against the SAT, as it would be ridiculous to attribute all the failings of his administration solely to a test.

Standardized tests have taken over education. Every year we await the results of the standardized tests and, after reading a Boston Globe spread fully equipped with charts, pie graphs, and an analysis of the MCAS scores of the school districts, many of the urban schools panic because they are not reaching the standards. So for the next academic year, they have to make sure to squeeze everything in their curriculum that the test aims to assess.

Imagine having to take a whole academic curriculum to prepare for standardized tests like the SATs. It's no surprise, then, that a large group of students in some of the urban school districts leave with diminished motivation to learn because of the absence of creative and thoughtful subject matters, which, in turn, cause the teachers to lose some motivation to teach.

Some small liberal arts colleges, such as Holy Cross, and even larger research institutions like the University of California, have dropped the SAT Reasoning Test as a college admissions requirement. Their rationale, as eloquently argued by then-President of the University of California Richard C. Atkinson, includes "overemphasis on the test distorting educational priorities and practices, how the test is perceived by many as unfair, and how it can have a devastating impact on the self-esteem and aspirations of young students."

Now they are trying to bring tests to college. The 550 schools of two big consortiums of public colleges, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, have agreed to administer standardized tests in order to measure the success of their students. Luckily, for private schools like Boston College, we do not need to worry about stunting intellectual growth for fear of losing government funding. We can focus on priorities other than passing a test. Hopefully, other institutions of higher learning will eventually catch on to how destructive an overemphasis on testing can be.

While done with good intentions, this policy could have seriously negative effects on college education. Just as it is advised to not move someone who is severely hurt unless you are qualified in first aid because you might cause further injuries, in that same way, even though the logic behind standardized tests for college has good intentions, they could possibly be injurious to their own cause.

Nidia Fevry is a Heights staff columnist. She welcomes comments at fevry@bcheights.com.