To put last year's testing conversations into context, The Classic reached out to two experts on testing and assessment to get outside perspectives.

Dr. Joseph Krajcik is the Lappan-Phillips professor of  Science Education at Michigan State University. He spoke to The Classic over zoom at the end of the last school year. His expertise was requested due to his passion and dedication to improving the teaching and learning of science for students as young as those in kindergarten and for his overall expertise and contributions to the field of science education (and since STEM classes often feature into testing conversations at THHS) . Dr. Krajcik's expertise and excellence is exemplified by the many awards and recognitions he has received throughout his career, such as the prestigious McGraw prize in Pre-K-12 education that he received in 2020. This prize is awarded to individuals for their innovations and impact in education. His continued focus on the topic of overtesting in high school and his willingness to advocate for those who experience the adverse effects of overtesting make him someone whose perspective can add to the collection of thoughts shared by THHS students.

The Classic: What is your perspective on assessments and unit tests?

Dr. Krajcik: So my perspective on assessments is that they should be for learning and not for evaluation. As an educator, if we're really going to have schools be productive places where kids actually learn what they need to learn to basically prepare them for life then we need to change our focus from using assessments for evaluation to using them for learning, but we seldom do that. Assessments aren't used any different today than they were back when I was in school. 

I think that the major thing that has to happen is that we need to start to provide students with really good feedback that helps them develop. I know some teachers who work really hard at giving their kids feedback. But [there] needs to be far more of a focus in schools. Having a test once in a while, that's more of an evaluation [and that] would be okay. But even that test should give the kid feedback to allow them to go further, and we don't do that. And at the university level, I see it as well. I can spend hours giving students feedback, but they don't pay attention to it. What they really want is just a grade because we've indoctrinated kids ever since they've been in elementary school to get grades and they don't pay attention to the feedback. So I think we really need to start focusing more on helping teachers give kids productive feedback, and helping kids interpret that feedback and use that feedback so they can actually learn more. 

Tests are designed for external motivations. The kid wants to get a good grade. I actually find seeking to get a good grade to be harmful in the long run with respect to learning. My perspective, if we're really going to grow a nation of kids who can really help us solve problems that we have today, is that we really have to help them develop intrinsic motivation to want to learn. And so I think taking multiple choice tests or short answer tests, which are content driven, simply turns off lots of students and we lose a lot of students because of that. And I think when we focus solely on memorized content where kids have to select the correct answer or write down a short answer, that's very devastating to learning. 

The Classic: What are your feelings towards SATs, APs, ACTs, and other major high stakes tests?

Dr. Krajcik: Well, I personally think [the SATs and PSATs] are useless. If you have a kid who comes from a family who does a lot of reading in the house and has conversations with the kid around the dinner table those kids typically do pretty good on these things. If you come from a family where the parents aren't well-educated and the kids don't have conversations with their parents around the house, and they don't have books laying around the house, the kids aren't going to do as well as other kids. It doesn't matter what they do in school. I mean, schooling helps, but I don't know if they're a very good indication of where a person's going to end up in life. And I think we lose some really talented learners, young people, because of the scores they get on the SATs and PSATs. I guess we could use it as one criteria, but I wouldn't put very much weight on it. There needs to be other markers of people's abilities and promises. I think if we focus more on giving kids productive feedback, kids would do much better on the SAT. 

The Classic: In particular, what would you say to teachers who believe that nothing can effectively assess a student’s understanding of a unit’s content better than a test? Is there a way to show a student has learned the content without a traditional test? 

Dr. Krajcik: [Projects and essays are] probably a better marker of what [students] could do than if I do some crazy test, like multiple choice test. We want to give kids essays, projects, things to develop that are challenging, but allows them to demonstrate their understanding, and at the same time, helps them develop further understanding. So the nice thing when you get involved in doing any kind of writing, in doing any kind of project, if you're building something, you should actually be challenged, because you actually want to be able to learn something more. When you get involved in a project, you actually start learning skills that you didn't have before. I think particularly when the projects are something that kids really want to get involved in. I think that's really how we can promote learning. And particularly when you have a teacher at the same time that can provide feedback to the student on what they're doing, I think it'd be very valuable. 

And so I think we can create tasks that are more engaging and that allow kids to apply what they know rather than just recall what they know. So in my work, I really push on application of knowledge and not on the recall of knowledge. 

The Classic: In some instances tests can make up up to seventy percent of a student’s average. Do you think this to be an appropriate percentage? 

 Dr. Krajcik: I think [tests being worth 70% of a student’s average is] really a lot. I failed out of high school. I was terrible. But [now] I'm a very good science educator. It was only until I started realizing I'd love to learn that I wanted to learn. And when you put only emphasis on tests, as far as a kid knowing something, I think it's become very detrimental. It works against motivating kids to want to learn. You know, the other thing that tests do, is it's unrealistic. Occasionally you work by yourself. I work by myself, I write by myself. But I also work with people. When there's a challenging problem, you don't sit there and solve it on your own. You work with a group of people and you solve it. 

The Classic: New York state is currently proposing to move away from high stakes testing (by reducing or removing the role of Regents Exams). What are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Krajcik: Well, I don't know much about the regents, but I did hear that the state of New York is actually moving, at least in science, is moving more towards application as far as their testing practices. So if that's the case, I'm happy with it. I think it's also detrimental. Some kids just read a little bit faster than other kids. So anytime you have a timed test, I think that can be somewhat detrimental to a student really demonstrating what they know and can do. 

The Classic: What else should students know about testing?

Dr. Krajcik: What I’m doing is trying to change the focus of assessment from evaluation to using assessments for a process of learning, giving kids and teachers feedback about what kids know. Often we give kids tests and kids who don't do well on them, we don't even pay attention to them. We just go on to the next topic. But often in topics like physics and science, language, things are developmental. So if a kid doesn't know something down here and then you ask them to go on to the next level, how's he going to get it right if he doesn't succeed down here. For kids who aren't successful, we constantly make them unsuccessful by doing that. You really wanna push assessments for learning and assessments and providing feedback to kids to really help them develop further understanding.

To put last year's push for "alternative assessments" into context, The Classic reached out to a second expert on testing and assessments. This expert offered a different point of view from Dr. Krajcik.

Randy E. Bennett spoke to The Classic via zoom at the end of the 2024- 2025 school year. Dr. Bennett is Norman O. Frederiksen Chair in Assessment Innovation in the Research and Development Division at the Educational Testing Service (ETS), an organization in Princeton, New Jersey. His research centers around using advances in technology, the learning sciences, and measurement to improve assessments for learning. He directed the National Assessment in Educational Progress (NAEP) Technology based Assessment project, which was the first to administer computerized standardized testing on a national scale. His dedication to ensuring equity in education and consideration for how students’ cultural backgrounds play a role in their success in education makes his perspective on how to handle current conversations at THHS on testing highly valuable.

The Classic: What are your thoughts on the testing schedules of THHS? Do you believe them to be ineffective or effective towards ensuring students are not overwhelmed with testing? Why or why not?

Dr. Bennett: I was very surprised by the testing calendar because of the sort of guidelines or rules that are included with it because they're focused on classroom testing as opposed to external testing. [Unit tests] help to solidify what it is they have learned in preparation for the test or quiz. They encourage students to prepare. They force them to consolidate, to study, to rehearse, to organize what it is they've learned over the course of a unit. The second main purpose [of unit tests] is to let the teacher know how effectively that unit was taught, because if many students don't do well on that test, that means that the teacher needs to teach that unit differently next year. When unit tests cover the content sufficiently, when there's enough questions to do that, and [when they’re clearly tied to the curriculum,] they are meaningful and trustworthy.

The Classic: More specifically, is it effective to have a calendar that limits the amount of tests that can be given? 

Dr. Bennett: I think that restricting them in the way that the school seems to have done is really counterproductive. It's an overgeneralization from the pushback that occurred, particularly in New York, around standardized testing and the amount of time that was being devoted to standardized tests. All of the other tests that impinge upon teaching time and learning time [like state testing] should be limited. Many districts have done audits, and when they do those audits, they often find that there's duplication. And by doing those audits, they sometimes, or often, can eliminate tests that are unnecessary. [Teachers should be able to give as many tests as they deem fit in the classroom] within the bounds of reason. So, for example, I would feel that unit tests being more frequent than one a month would probably be unnecessary. But having a unit test every month seems very reasonable to me. Having a quiz even once a week seems reasonable to me. 

The Classic: In some cases assessments can make up up to seventy percent of a student’s average. Do you believe this to be an appropriate percentage? What would you say to teachers who believe that nothing can effectively assess a student’s understanding of a unit’s content better than a test? 

I think what the administration should do is encourage the use of multiple methods for assessing students because each assessment method has advantages and limitations. So that includes unit tests, quizzes, but it also includes essays, projects, presentations, and other kinds of performances. Instead of alternatives, I think of other assessment methods as complements, because I think unit testing is valuable, but I think it always should be complemented with other assessment methods.

If a fixed weight is assigned to a particular assessment method it may be the case that one ought to be more flexible with the weighting across assessment methods. [I would] give the teachers a little more freedom to decide how much weight to give different assessment methods, depending upon student performance, thereby allowing a little more leeway in how to adjust for students who don't do well on one method versus do well on another. If a student does a stellar project, but performs relatively poorly on the unit assessment, it would seem silly to conclude that the student didn't try or that the student didn't benefit from the unit. Clearly the student learned. Maybe the student simply had a bad day on that day of that test. [For teachers who believe unit testing is the only method of assessing students] I would say that they need to consider that what tests do very well is to measure breadth of content knowledge. What they don't do well at all is test the depth of knowledge. And what it is that other methods bring is an opportunity to delve more deeply into what it is students know and can do.

The Classic: What are your thoughts on the SATs, APs, ACTs, and other major high stakes tests? 

Dr. Bennett: AP tests, I think, are very important and helpful for learning. The reason is that each AP assessment is tied directly to a curriculum outline, an outline of what it is that's supposed to be taught over the course of typically a year-long course and what it is that's going to appear in the AP test is tied to that curriculum outline. The SAT and ACT are very different. There is no course. There is no curriculum outline. There is no particular set of learnings that the SAT and ACT are assessing. So, the AP tests, I find, to be very helpful in terms of preparing students, encouraging students to prepare and learn very deeply the course content that they're engaging in. The [SATs and ACTs are] certainly less valuable for learning purposes than the APs. They serve reasonably well the purpose of contributing to college admissions. However, most universities no longer require them. So, outside of that small number of institutions, they have very little utility any longer. 

The Classic: In instances of academic dishonesty what precautions should be taken? 

Dr. Bennett: The best precautions [for cheating] are to try to make sure students understand that when they cheat, you know, they are in part cheating themselves because they're giving themselves a false impression of what it is that they've learned. And how well they learn is going to have important consequences going forward for what it is that they can do in post-secondary education and in the workforce. Secondly, teachers have to be on the lookout for cheating behavior and they have to be backed up by the administration in implementing consequences that deal with it in effective ways. There certainly should be punishments. Probably some type of a set of graduated consequences would be appropriate. First time caught gets a warning, second time caught, parents come in, third time caught, so on.

The Classic: What are you currently researching/ working on?

Dr. Bennett: I'm [currently] working on a personalizing assessment. So, that is creating assessments that are adjusted to the backgrounds, interests, prior knowledge, and cultural identities of the students individually. What piqued my interest in making individualized assessments is that it became clear that the ways that we had been constructing standardized tests were based in a very monocultural perspective, but the United States has changed demographically very dramatically. We’ve gone from roughly 80 percent of the population being caucasian to 59% being caucasian, so we need to reflect this diversity in ways tests haven’t historically. So one way to deal with that kind of diversity is to try and diversify because students come to school with different cultural backgrounds, different interests as a result of those backgrounds, and different ways of making sense of the world. If we only teach and test from a single monocultural perspective we only connect to that subculture of students that were raised in that monocultural perspective and that does not serve the interest of the country.