Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser | "Will That Be on the Exam?" The Role of Testing in Teaching and Learning American History | The Journal of American History, 90.4

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Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser | "Will That Be on the Exam?" The Role of Testing in Teaching and Learning American History | The Journal of American History, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

"Will That Be on the Exam?" The Role of Testing in Teaching and Learning American History

Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser, Contributing Editors, Textbooks and Teaching

"Will that be on the exam?" The question is annoying, but it reflects an inescapable dimension of American education. Success or failure on tests affects the academic careers and life choices of students and, increasingly, the funding and operation of schools at the elementary, secondary, and collegiate levels. Federal and state laws mandate proficiency tests to measure whether taxpayers are getting their money's worth in the campaign to raise educational standards without (supposedly) leaving any child "behind." Whether we like it or not, such tests influence what and how we teach, and what and how our students learn. Educators frequently complain about the restrictions involved in teaching to a standardized test devised and imposed by an outside authority, but even when we use examinations that we have developed ourselves, we are encouraging students to limit their intellectual curiosity to what we test. If we answer no to the question of whether a particular topic will be covered by an exam, we strongly signal that knowledge of this topic is not as important as knowledge of those topics that will be covered. Deciding what knowledge to assess and how to assess it are essential and ineluctable aspects of history instruction as practiced in the United States today.

For commentary on the role of testing in teaching and learning American history, we solicited articles from three prominent scholars of trends in American education, each with experience bridging the academic and policy-making realms in contemporary debates over curricular content and pedagogy. Let us introduce each author and article in turn.

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