Teaching to the test

"Teaching to the test" is a colloquial term for any method of education whose curriculum is heavily focused on preparing students for a standardized test. Opponents of this practice argue that it forces teachers to limit curriculum to a set range of knowledge or skills in order to increase student performance on the mandated test. This produces an unhealthy focus on excessive repetition of simple, isolated skills ("drill and kill") and limits the teacher's ability to foster a holistic understanding of the subject matter. With high-stakes testing impeding over every decision teachers make, they are often forced to teach to the tests rather than to their students. This can drain instruction of passion and meaning as students are taught information from a bare-bones curriculum. This would be an incidence of Campbell's law, the general principle that a social indicator distorts the process it is intended to monitor. Furthermore, opponents argue, teachers who engage in it are typically below-average teachers. Some research suggests that teaching to the test is ineffective and often does not achieve its primary goal of raising student scores. The usual method of teaching to the test is to give specific information, then test it at the end of each unit. Typically, these are tests of rote procedures and memorized facts, rather than of understanding or logical thinking. Teaching to the test is also frequently used for skill-based learning, like typing or athletics; in this context, teaching to the test is the dominant practice. Teaching to the test may misrepresent students' true learning. For example, students who have learned vocabulary words for a reading test will score well even though they cannot use a broad vocabulary. In mathematics, students drilled on only test-like questions often can not correctly answer questions that assess the same skill or concept in a different way. According to Craig Jerald, one study has shown that in a district that relied heavily on item drilling, 83 percent of students selected the correct answer to a multiple-choice item "87 − 24 =.