Tag: testing

The Moral Dilemmas of High-Stakes Tests

Just in time for the standardized testing season, Gillum and Bello have a damning article on irregularities in the testing at some Washington D.C. schools. NPR has a good summary of the situation and the investigation.

Sadly, with the fates of their schools and their jobs depending on the outcome, the faculty and staff administering these tests to their own students face an unfortunate conflict of interests and are placed in a serious moral hazzard. It’s also not hard to imagine the potential for ramped-up pressure on the students.

Standardized tests can play an important role in maintaining quality in the vast network of schools that make up the US’s educational system. They also help maintain consistency, of which a certain amount is probably good, but can be awfully restrictive. But the most unfortunate aspect about the way they’re actually used, is that they create intense pressure on students and faculty that is deleterious to student performance on the tests themselves, and severely restricts the way students think about what it means to learn.

Stress, pressure and performance

How well does extrinsic motivation help us perform? NPR recently had another interesting interview with Dan Ariely where he talked about how rewards, cash bonuses in this case, affect performance.

It turns out that while bonuses increase people’s desire to perform better, people actually perform worse, probably because of the increased stress.

Jonah Lehrer actually suggests that this also applies to negative rewards. He suggests the engineers trying to cap the oil leaking beneath the Gulf of Mexico should take more time off because pressure from powerful incentives reduces our ability to think creatively.

So think about what this implies for high-stakes testing.