LINKING TESTING AND INSTRUCTION: POLICY ISSUES

Abstract

We would not be surprised if many readers were to question the need for a special issue of JEM devoted to Testing and Instruction. After all, skeptics might reasonably argue, it is a truism that the content of standardized achievement tests-the focus of this issue-must be linked to instruction if meaningful inferences about performance are to be made. Further, they might contend that a central tenet of the evaluation movement is the need to gather information about student achievement using tests directly linked to educational objectives and instruction. Obviously, our skeptics are correct. Why then this special issue? The reason is that standardized achievement testing is no longer concerned primarily with issues directly related to classroom practice and to the use of results by teachers. Increasingly, standardized achievement tests are being used for a host of policy-oriented purposes: assessing educational equity; providing evidence on school and program effectiveness; allocating compensatory funds to school districts; evaluating teacher effectiveness; accrediting school districts; classifying students for remediation; and certifying successful completion of high school or a given grade of elementary school. Linking testing to instruction generally is not a major problem for individual teachers, thanks partly to sensitive teacher judgment about the relevance of test items to the content of instruction in their classroom and partly to many textbook publishers who now provide integrated teaching/testing/curriculum packages. When standardized tests were used primarily by teachers, the problem of the sensitivity of the test to actual classroom instruction was not a major issue. Generally, the results were not terribly important and seldom were major decisions made on the basis of the results. However, when achievement test results are intended to inform extra-classroom policy decisions where there is the potential for serious harm either to individuals or programs, then the problems of linking testing and instruction become acute. It is the increased use of achievement test results in the policy sphere, much less than the use of test results by classroom teachers, which makes this special issue so pertinent. Our task is to provide an overview of the issues associated with the problem of linking testing and instruction. First we describe two general policy areas which have prompted concern about these links: studies of school and program effectiveness and minimum competency testing programs used for pupil certification. While other policy issues noted above are important, space does not permit a discussion of each. However, the points associated with the two areas we shall deal with are also pertinent to these other issues. Second, we shall describe techniques that have been used to investigate links between tests and instruction. Finally, we shall address a number of educational and policy issues that arise from efforts to link tests and instruction.