"My Child Doesn't Test Well"

Lloyd Bond has published a very interesting article for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. It's published on the Carnegie Perspectives website; you can read the entire article and enter your own comments if you'd like. Here's the first part of the article. You can read the entire text by clicking the link above.

We've heard it countless times. "Not testing well" most often refers to poor performance on standardized, multiple-choice tests. Rarely does it refer to performance on classroom examinations and other schoolwork. In fact, it is precisely because school performance and test performance are at odds that the statement is likely invoked. Perhaps the most spectacular example of not testing well is that of Martin Luther King, Jr. An excellent student, King (who entered Morehouse College at the relatively young age of sixteen) performed miserably on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), scoring in the bottom decile on both the math and verbal sections. As we all know, however, he was "high verbal" by virtually any other measure: a gifted orator, author of seven books and a string of brilliant essays, including the impassioned and eloquent "Letter from Birmingham Jail." To be sure, the GRE verbal is not intended as a measure of writing ability, but it is nevertheless astounding that a gifted writer and orator like King would do so poorly on this examination.

It turns out that a sizable percentage of students perform well in their schoolwork but poorly on standardized, multiple-choice tests. Some may question whether this is a genuine phenomenon at all, arguing that low expectations and standards, and rampant grade inflation result in school "high performance" that is largely illusory. But I believe the phenomenon is real. There are students who genuinely perform well in school, but consistently do poorly on standardized tests of academic achievement. So what are the causes of poor test performance in the context of otherwise successful schoolwork?

I would propose four candidates: (1) test anxiety, (2) lack of test sophistication (or test-wiseness), (3) lack of automaticity and (4) test bias.