The future demise of scantron...

My office, being one of higher education, receives scholarly journals regarding various aspects of education - comparative history of educational methods, curricula, and waves of the future, just to name a few. One such journal is The Chronicle of Higher Education. Wrapped in plastic, I always glance at the titles of the main articles as they are listed on the front page of the main journal section and then at the back, which features the front page of the supplemental section entitled The Chronicle Review. I hit the jackpot with the issue we received on Friday. Working at the University, I have access to a large quantity of scholarly journals/periodicals/etc via the online electronic subscriptions held by the University Libraries. So, as on Friday, I accessed the journal articles and proceeded to print several articles.

The first was "No Computer Left Behind". Although the article title left much to be desired, the article itself waxed poetic about the controversy surrounding multiple-choice tests and the ignorance of American students regarding history. The author went into the history of how multiple-choice tests became so popular, especially following the invention of the mass grading tool of Scantron bubble test forms. (Personally, I think the article could have been better written because it wasn't always clear if the author was blasting Scantron, or multiple-choice tests in general. Although the two are connected, I feel they are separate issues.) Anyhow, the gist of the argument is this: With the advent of new technology such as the world wide web and cell phones that can access and search web pages for answers, how well do multiple-choice tests measure our educational developments/achievements of our college students? The author was particularly concerned about the area of history and testing with multiple-choice. The author felt that multiple-choice tests encouraged "ignorance" of history by providing likely choices of answers that can be easily selected without the tester having to put forth much effort. Indeed, companies like Kaplan teach students how to take multiple-choice tests in order to better their chances of selecting the correct answer. The author feels that the factual memorization of historical dates will fall by the wayside as students use tools like cell phones to obtain that information from the web, rather like when calculators became a common tool in exam rooms, allowing students to do multiplication easily in order to to focus on more complex problems in math (rather than memorization of multiplication tables). The author went on to argue the merits of new web developments used by the NSA and CIA for accurate translations (instead of paying for human translators) and the justification of using multiple-choice tests in light of the costs of human graders and the possibility of subjectivity in grading by multiple personnel.

Now for my point of view... After weeding through all the academic fluff, I believe there are several different issues that the author was trying to pull together...not quite successfully but I understand where it was going. First, there is the question regarding whether the use of multiple-choice testing of historical knowledge is an accurate measurement of a student's knowledge. I say "no". Having taken many of those tests, it doesn't take a lot of knowledge to be able to select the correct answer, especially if you've been coached on methods of taking multiple-choice tests. I did receive that coaching and it's easier than you might think. However, when put on the spot to answer an essay question on the same subject matter, I frequently struggled to come up with the analysis needed to argue the answer in a logical manner. The essay questions challenge you to really think about the material rather than looking at your options and knowing it's either "b" or "c".

Second, there is the question regarding new technological inventions to aid testers in obtaining needed answers and whether educational methods should be revised to take those into account. This is a little harder to judge. Unlike math, which follows specific rules of theory and hypotheses, history is "alive" for lack of a better word. It is dynamic and changing, without always following a logical pattern. The calculator is the "easy button" for doing the small portions of mathematics so that a tester can focus more of his or her time solving more complex problems, but letting students use cell phones (or PDAs) to search the web for historical dates and other information is cheating them of knowing where to place events in time. There shouldn't be an "easy button" for history. Yes, it isn't always important to know the EXACT date of when something occurred but you should know the general time period. I can't recall the year the Dawes Act was put into place (Native American legislature determining where Indians could own land), but I know it was the 1830's. While this isn't important when considering only the Dawes Act, if I were to be required to look at a series of events for comparison, it's important to know the sequence of how one led to another. Maybe my argument isn't strong enough, but I believe history is a field where the use of an "easy button" would be more harmful than beneficial.

Third, there is the question of whether the web is capable of providing accurate information. The author states that most websites on the web contain either inaccuraces or are complete fiction. New web developments (search engines using primary sources) are resulting in an 82% answer accuracy, but I have to ask, again, if this is more harmful to the tester or is it beneficial? I can see its benefit to non-students but think that it may be best to restrict the use of these kinds of search engines to exclude college testers.

The author did mention the "No Child Left Behind" legislation but failed to incorporate it into the discussion of his argument. It was only brought up again the last paragraph as "Politicians who insist on raising the 'stakes' in standardized testing need to provide the funds for people rather than machines to do the grading." Personally, there isn't enough there to even consider my thoughts on it. Also, I'm not familiar with all the idiosyncracies involved with the "No Child Left Behind" legislation and will just leave this one alone.