In education circles, testing has become the villain of the day. Kids declare exams to be a waste of time while educators argue that the anxiety around tests produces a “toxic environment.” Families loathe exams, too, as I learned when doing some research on assessments, with parents often viewing tests as either a distraction from more important activities or as “testing for testing’s sake.”
But when it comes to learning, it turns out, the best research shows that exams help learning rather than harm it, and most schools and universities actually should be doing more testing, not less of it. A large and growing body of studies indicates that assessments help students learn. More — and better — testing programs can also help teachers teach.
Cutting against the grain of all the negative chatter about tests, some cognitive psychologists, including Yana Weinstein at University of Massachusetts Lowell, have declared themselves to be “champions” of testing.
The catch is that the tests have to be the right kinds of tests. The exams that spark learning typically tend to have lower stakes, they have more open-ended questions, and they are given often enough to provide clear feedback to teachers and students. But if they’re well designed, tests have been proven to help students achieve mastery of the subject material — not just evaluate progress.
This piece ran in Vox. Read more here.