Passing the test

Two organizations representing hundreds of U.S. colleges agreed last week to move forward with a proposal to introduce standardized testing.

This is not as revolutionary as it appears. Standardized tests are not new ground for colleges; ACT or SAT tests have been mandatory for high school graduates for decades.

But what is new is the idea of measuring students on their way out.

The less-contested part of the proposal is to have a Web site, voluntarysystem.com, where costs and experiences can be compared and that is worth having. Potential CMU students and parents should be able to compare those two categories somewhere besides ratemyprofessor.com, even though a national hotness rating for professors might be fun.

Standardized tests are treated by many educators as the silver bullet to their werewolf of an educational system. Often they’re right. No Child Left Behind was precipitated on standardized tests and is widely considered a failure.

Lessons from No Child should be heeded here; properly supporting schools financially for the testing (which becomes public in two years and mandatory for participants in four years) is needed, as is local control and variations.

The main problem with standardized tests is that they assume there is a standard education and that it is measurable.

How can multicultural experiences and multimedia projects be applied to Scantron tests? How can a lifetime inspiration be phrased in a fill-in-the-blank question? More importantly, how can a capacity for thinking be measured?

These are questions that need to be answered before CMU should sign on.

The arguments for standardized testing stem from calls for accountability. The skyrocketing college costs may be what will ensure standardized tests. College costs grow far faster than inflation and standardized tests could bring some market forces to bear against the increases, or at least balance increases with statistical improvements in education.

But ACT and SAT tests are statistically biased in favor of males and richer participants, according to fairtest.org. Graduates of better high schools hardly need the extra hand up and costly coaching can improve scores even more. Money may be able to buy a college education but should not be a factor in deciding how good a college, or its education, is.

CMU should move forward cautiously. Foregoing standardized tests is turning our backs on the next phase of higher education, but jumping into this plan might be premature.

CMU students can compete with others nationally, voluntarysystem.com may be one way to prove that. But there could be other ways of doing so and those ways should be exhausted before standardized exit tests are implemented.