Response #2: How can standardized testing be turned to the students' advantage?

There is an important difference between assessment and grading.  One determines the student's knowledge and progress in the given field, while the other assigns a numerical value to that student's work.  Teachers struggle to teach students valuable information and life lessons around cumbersome standardized tests that dominate the end of each semester or year of public schooling.  These tests have a purpose, to hold teachers, schools, and local governments accountable to policymakers and the public on the education of their children.  However, they hold little value as an assessment of student ability, because the sheer volume of tests that must be administered, processed, and recorded necessitates simple questions which have one correct answer.

These questions, commonly multiple-choice, true/false, and matching, are easily processed but provide only a shallow account of the student's abilities.  On the large scale, they can show which districts, schools, and sometimes classrooms are struggling, but they are to general to be good assessors of individual ability.  Teachers need to recognize this and use more detailed (and yes, more time-consuming) methods such as in-class observation, projects, and/or portfolios to provide a clearer picture of a student's ability.  Scantron sheeted-answer keys for multiple-choice tests are a supplement for direct, personal assessment, not a replacement for it.