Standardization Without Reason

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education recently recommended that colleges begin mandating standardized tests for students, in order to supposedly hold universities and educators responsible for the education they purport to provide. However, as far as higher education is concerned, the last thing that is necessary is some form of standardized testing.

A standardized educational curriculum is mandated through high school. This is the timeframe in which states are required to provide students the basic skills they need to be “productive” members of society. If the states cannot teach children basic algebra and other essential skills in 12 or sometimes 13 years, why should the burden fall to universities? Standardized testing already exists in high schools thanks to illegitimate, improper federal bullying such as the No Child Left Behind Act. This practice, imposing a national standardized education curriculum, is improper at the high school level, let alone at the college level.

Not only is college completely optional education, it is also a time of specialization for those who attend. Many students go to college to learn a particular skill; most colleges require students to major in one specific field or another. How can one expect a music concentrator to have the same strengths as a biology concentrator? To satisfy these national education requirements, colleges would have to completely alter their educational philosophies.

Furthermore, standardized tests in general are an enormous waste of time and money. Students waste countless hours in the standardized testing process; whether the hours spent include learning content specifically (and only) because it is found on the test, or the several hours spent taking the test itself, time is thrown away on an incredibly arbitrary “validation” of what one should already know.

Some argue that this time is well-spent, that we should always hold students and professors and even institutions accountable for the education that should be accrued. A multiple-choice test, however, cannot accurately assess true knowledge of a subject, and some students have difficulty showing what they know in a standardized test format. There are countless stories of students improving 200 or more points on the SAT, either with or without extra preparation. According to the logic of standardized tests, this means that these students are 12.5 percent smarter than before the course, that they have gained immense knowledge from practicing analogies repeatedly. This, however, seems improbable. In many ways, knowledge cannot be measured by filling in bubbles for three hours—especially in the humanities and social sciences.

Even ignoring the fact that the tests are inherently flawed, they are also simply redundant; the means to measure accountability already exists through the process of accreditation. This process, which is carried out at pre-ordained intervals by a regional governing board, is supposed to evaluate whether an academic institution is indeed academically institutionalized enough. If a school has accreditation, it has already passed the tests and has been certified as a valid educational center.

Even more basically, every state has an interest in ensuring that its colleges and universities are performing and educating their students. A state with schools that are failing will have a vested interest in fixing these schools because educated citizens and workers make the state stronger; there is no reason for the federal government to get involved unless states ask for help.

These regulations even usher in the threat of censorship. Many universities have unorthodox views, whether very conservative or very liberal, or even completely off the political spectrum. If the federal government imposes a curriculum, which is essentially what standardized testing does, it will limit the way schools can teach and even what they are allowed to teach because they will have to pander to the arbitrary, supposedly neutral and politically correct standards of some national education advisory committee.

It would be difficult for the government to dictate that private universities use standardized testing because this would clearly violate basic constitutional limitations on federal power; simply put, Congress does not have the right to impose arbitrary standards on non-essential, private educational institutions. At best, it is a state’s right to address this issue. Recognizing this, the plan suggests rescinding federal financial aid from students who go to universities that do not adopt standardized testing practices. By coercing schools into adopting these tests, the government would be skirting the constitutionality issue while showing utter contempt for the spirit of the document

For many students, college education is an entirely private matter, undertaken with their own funds for their own purposes. The government has no justification for testing these students because they get no money from the government. Everyone in such situations who does not receive individual financial aid would still have to take the tests but would receive no direct benefit from them. These unfortunate students would essentially be paying for “justification” of their private education while receiving no tangible benefits in the form of federal aid or a measurably better or more comprehensive education.

When considering standardized testing at the collegiate level, it is impossible to see it as anything but wasteful, without merit, and disregarding the spirit of the Constitution. It should not be implemented under the current educational system, and hopefully Congress will have the wisdom to ignore the recommendations of the Committee on the Future of Higher Education.



Shai D. Bronshtein ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Matthews Hall.