The Fundamental Principle: No Unnecessary Testing (NUT)
by Stephen Krashen
No Unnecessary Testing (NUT) is the principle
that school should include only those tests and
parts of tests that are necessary, that
contribute to essential evaluation and
learning. Every minute testing and doing “test
preparation” (activities to boost scores on
tests that do not involve genuine learning) is
stolen from students’ lives, in addition to
costing money that we cannot afford these days,
with serious budget problems in American
schools.
If we accept the NUT principle, it leads to
this question: Do we need yearly standardized
tests closely linked to the curriculum? Do they
tell us more than teacher evaluation does? This
issue must be looked at scientifically. If, for
example, the current CSAP (Colorado Student
Assessment Program) test is shortened and/or
given less frequently or abandoned, will
student performance be affected? Would
Colorado’s NAEP scores (already quite high) be
affected?
My prediction is that teacher evaluation does a
better job of evaluating students than
standardized testing: The repeated judgments
of professionals who are with children every
day is probably more valid that a test created
by distant strangers. Moreover, teacher
evaluations are “multiple measures,” are
closely aligned to the curriculum, and cover
more than just math and reading.
There is some evidence supporting this view for
high school students: Research by UC Berkeley
scholars Saul Geiser and Maria Veronica
Saltelices shows that high school grades in
college preparatory courses are a better
predictor of achievement in college and four-
year college graduation rates than are
standardized tests (the SAT). Geiser and
Saltelices found that adding SAT scores to
grades did not provide much more information
than grades alone, which suggests that we may
not need standardized tests at all.
For those who argue that we need standardized
tests in order to compare student achievement
over time and to compare subgroups of students,
we already have a good instrument for this, the
NAEP. The NAEP is administered to small groups
of children, who each take a portion of the
test, every few years. Results are extrapolated
to estimate how the larger groups would score.
No test prep is done, as the tests are zero
stakes: There are no (or should be no)
consequences for low or high scores. If we are
interested in a general picture of how children
are doing, this is the way to do it. If we are
interested in finding out about a patient’s
health, we only need to look at a small sample
of their blood, not all of it.
My predictions, however, need to be put to the
empirical test. A conservative path is to start
to cut back on standardized tests, both in
length and frequency, and determine if this has
any negative consequences. This is an essential
move now, when funds are so scarce, and it is
an essential exercise of our responsibility to
students.
Geiser, S. and Santelices, M.V., 2007. Validity
of high-school grades in predicting student
success beyond the freshman year: High-school
record vs. standardized tests as indicators of
four-year college outcomes. Research and
Occasional Papers Series: CSHE 6.07, University
of California, Berkeley.
http://cshe.berkeley.edu
— Stephen Krashen
The Colorado Communicator
2008-11-01
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