In the process of planning backwards to design a unit of study, the first step a teacher might do is to decide on the learning goals;  what should a student know and be able to do at the end of the unit?  And the next step is generally to design assessments so that both the teacher and the student will know whether mastery has been achieved.

It seems clear, then, that tests should directly reflect the learning goals, even help clarify them.  Unfortunately, tests often inadvertently cause tests to assess totally unrelated skills, often with serious unintended consequences.

One of the most common is intentionally giving students not enough time to finish the test.  The justification, if there is one, is that time constraints can discriminate between students who really know the material from students who take too long and don’t finish the test on time.  Unfortunately, this cruel practice also generates high levels of stress and anxiety in many students.  If the skill of showing what you have learned and doing under intense pressure is something we want students to master, we should let them practice this skill and train them how to do it well.  I personally find it hard to see how this could be considered a useful skill in life.  And if it isn’t, the damage that is done to students is needless and, in my mind at least, inexcusable.  

In Illinois, the ACT test is part of the standardized tests mandated by No Child Left Behind.  I have taken the Science Reasoning portion of the test, and I have done quite badly because I can’t seem to help trying answer the questions based on actually understanding the readings that the questions are based on.  There is, by design, nowhere near enough time to do that.

Like every teacher in my school, I would spend one whole week training my students how to raise their ACT scores.  This training consisted largely of teaching them techniques that would shave seconds off of answering each question - teaching them how to skim the reading passage after reading the question to find the answers as quickly as possible.  The pointlessness of this activity, combined with how little most of the questions have to do with any content or skill that we actually teach in high school, are a major indictment of the whole process.  I cannot imagine designing a process that would relate less to what we do and what we hope to accomplish with our students in school.