Yes
Robert C. Koons:
Tests will help gauge the value of the credential

Students should be required to take standardized tests, both upon entering college (an aptitude test like the SAT) and two national achievement tests before completing a bachelor's degree. One of these latter tests should be in their major subject (such as the GRE Achievement tests) and one in writing and critical thinking (such as the GRE Writing Assessment), but students should not be required to earn a specific score on either test in order to graduate. Although it would be inappropriate to set an arbitrary minimum score for graduation, higher education would benefit greatly from requiring all graduating students to submit themselves to standardized evaluation.

First, these tests would provide prospective employers with an objective, disinterested measurement of student achievement. In the last 20 years, more than a dozen studies (including the 1993 report of the Wingspread Group) have documented a nationwide trend toward grade inflation and falling academic standards. As institutions compete for student enrollments by lowering academic standards, we risk entering a period of academic hyperinflation. Such runaway inflation could result in the collapse of undergraduate education, as students, parents and taxpayers become unwilling to underwrite the expense of attaining a meaningless credential.

Second, national achievement tests will promote equal opportunity and reduce conflict over admissions to elite institutions by bringing an end to the current undervaluing of achievement attained by students attending low-prestige institutions.

Finally, national achievement tests will make possible the value-added assessment of instruction, both on institution-by-institution and instructor-by-instructor bases. By comparing the results of exit tests with those of entrance tests, it is possible to get a reliable measure of the contribution each institution or instructor has made toward improving student performance. The methodology for such assessment is well established and already in use at the K-12 level. College instructors currently are evaluated almost exclusively by student opinion surveys, which unavoidably focus on style and entertainment value over academic substance and also exacerbate the pressures for grade inflation. Value-added assessment employing standardized tests would result in a system that rewards teachers for teaching.

Some would object to the use of standardized tests altogether, claiming that these measure only the rote memorization of facts. This objection is simply misinformed: Existing standardized tests measure intellectual skills at every level, including high-order analysis and critical thinking.

Standardized tests are no longer limited to multiple-choice questions; many such tests include the evaluation of student essays. Standardized tests can also respect regional and institutional variation by including a large number of subscores, each measuring a different facet of the subject (different regions, periods, methodologies, etc.).

No
Dan Georgianna
Tests would show that politics rule

I used to think that exit exams for high school graduates were a good idea. I thought that testing basic reading comprehension, writing and arithmetic would mitigate against social promotions, lower expectations and fewer educational resources for African-American and for poor children.

Then my thought was tested: The Massachusetts state government created the Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) as part of educational reform. Tests were given in four broad subject areas to fourth-, eighth- and 10th-graders, with high school graduation dependent upon passing the 10th-grade exams.

At first, teachers and school administrators had some say in the processes for testing and preparation. Committees of teachers proposed frameworks for the tests. But in a short time, educators lost control of the process. The state department of education rejected the frameworks proposed by committees of teachers and replaced them with rigid curricula selected by bureaucrats with their feet firmly planted in school experiences of the 1950s. The math curriculum, for example, followed the suggestions from a group called Mathematically Correct, which advocated memorization.

Chaos now rules. MCAS takes two months out of the school year for preparation and testing. The test questions, mostly multiple choice, are generally ambiguous. Failure rates are high, especially in inner-city and other poor school districts. Teachers are demoralized. Principals are running for cover. Parent groups are suing the state, and kids are scared. The 10th-grade exam is 13 hours, one hour longer than the Massachusetts bar exam.

The arguments for exit exams for college graduation are appealing; I used to believe them. Objective achievement exams would weed out bad students, incompetent teachers and fraudulent diploma mills. Students, faculty, and universities would have a better idea of what was required from them, and employers would have a yardstick against which to measure the quality of graduates.

But these wouldn't be the results. Politics would rule in designing the tests. Exit exams are too big a target to miss for politicians and others driven by ideological motives. Bad students wouldn't learn more. They would ignore classes and concentrate on the test. Basing faculty evaluations on student test scores can never work, and the diploma mills are exactly suited for canned examinations. They would gain credibility by teaching to the test and manipulating the results.

The current process in most U.S. colleges and universities--where faculty control their syllabus within the framework of their department and college curricula, and test their students on mastering that syllabus--may not be perfect. But rule by exit exams would be worse.