Let’s have better debates about standardized tests (opinion)

Reasonable people can come to different conclusions about the proper role of standardized testing, what qualities should be measured and how to measure them. Those debates are healthy and productive. It’s less productive when we stake out our positions without giving opposing arguments a fair hearing. Even worse are our tendencies to misrepresent opposing views.

Akil Bello’s recent piece “The Misguided War on Test Optional” illustrates this problem. Consider the way Bello misrepresents opposing views. Bello, who advocates for test-optional admission policies, describes one opponent as having published a “loving ode to elitism.” Supporters of standardized tests, in his account, “tend to look not at whom the tests hurt or what the tests miss but instead their sorting power.” Their core arguments against test-optional and other policies assume that “the purpose of college is to rank and sort members of society” and that the tools for doing so “should exist unquestioned in perpetuity.”

In my 30 years of experience in assessment and test preparation, I haven’t met people who hold the views Bello describes. Instead, I’ve found that people in this industry believe that to improve education, we need to take an honest look at measurable outcomes.

We often disagree about what should be on the tests, and how important the tests should be, but we tend to think that:

• The tests measure some important things. We believe this because of data we see on the predictive value of the tests, our examination of tests themselves, and/or our experience with people who take them.
• There are meaningful skill differences between people with very different scores.
• Standardized tests provide a common measure for people who went to different schools and had different academic experiences.
• The explanatory power of high school grades is diluted by grade inflation and differences between and within schools, classes and teachers.
• Other aspects of the application, such as essays and recommendations, deserve a place in the process, but are highly subjective and even more influenced by societal inequality than standardized tests are.

For these reasons and more, many of us believe that standardized tests deserve a place in the current admissions process. Reasonable people can disagree with any of the above conclusions, but we should be able to have that debate without misrepresenting opposing views. This particular tactic is part of the reason why our debates are so dysfunctional. Arguing against exaggerations of opposing views gets more attention and rallies our allies but it also alienates those who disagree while impeding common understanding and compromise.

We can do better. Let’s return to the principle that we should understand opposing views before forming an opinion. To that end, here’s a quick attempt at describing the views of those who want to abolish the testing requirements. They typically believe that the tests are unfair, irrelevant and magnify social inequality. They might believe that the tests measure the wrong things; others believe that no test could deserve a place in the process. Test opponents are concerned about demographic differences in test scores. For many of them, the differences themselves are conclusive evidence against the tests. They know plenty of people with great scores who didn’t succeed in life, and plenty who had terrible scores and achieved great success. And even if tests have some value, test critics question whether they are worth the costs involved—not just financial costs but also the time involved in preparing for the tests.

Once we acknowledge opposing views, we need to do more to bridge our divides. We also have to make good arguments and recognize the weaknesses of our own positions. Bello’s essay provides lessons there, though maybe not the ones he intended. For example:

• He argues that “all the benefits of testing continue to exist in a test-optional environment, though critics of the policy desperately want to pretend they do not.” This conclusion is based on the fact that at most colleges, applicants can and do submit scores, and therefore are able to take advantage of a good one. But this is misleading unless you know how colleges evaluate the decision not to submit scores. If people with low scores can bury them without it counting against them, then the difference between good scores and bad scores is diluted. If submitting grades were somehow optional, and people could hide their transcripts without penalty, wouldn’t it be fair to say that the advantages of good grades would be reduced? Moreover, the current test-optional approach makes it very difficult to tell whether a…