By Andrew Ho
What role should tests play in progressive pedagogy? It depends on what one means by “test.” Let’s say a “test” is a qualitative assessment, a judgment that teachers, students, and sometimes parents construct together. Then, assessments should be commonplace and central in progressive education. For example, a blog post here this April described the Hanahau‘oli “three-way conference,” where each student shares and discusses their portfolio with their teacher and caregiver (Makaiau & Galdeira, 2022). Such an assessment is entirely consistent with progressive aims, by encouraging student initiative, positioning the three parties in a cooperative triangle, and orienting all parties toward development from existing assets (Peters, 2019).
And what if by “test,” one means a “standardized test,” a product that an external provider sells to a school to enable quantitative comparisons of students to national norms on selected scales? Then, tests should be infrequent and arguably eliminated in progressive education. For most of these tests, neither students nor teachers have agency in task selection, deprofessionalizing both parties. Feedback is often delayed and decontextualized. And scores are often comparative, seeming to position students in competition rather than collaboration with each other. Such tests have many uses, but they are not consistent with progressive pedagogy.
This post is not meant to pick on standardized tests. I study them for a living, and I believe there are occasional but limited good uses of standardized tests for large-scale monitoring of educational progress (Ho, 2021). Instead, I question whether assessments, even in their most progressive sense, can generate scores that support progressive aims. By “scores,” I mean quantities like numbers, or classifications like grades. For example, when does a “three-way conference,” or any other classroom assessment, result in scores? How do children, teachers, and parents interpret such scores? Are scores useful for progressive aims? Or are scores too powerful, leading to triage, discouragement, and competition?
When it comes to test scores, I often say that we are “weak to numbers” (Ho, 2014). We ascribe numbers with unwarranted importance that manifests as three fallacies, that scores are 1) more meaningful, 2) more precise, and 3) more permanent than they actually are. These fallacies are common in interpretations of standardized test scores, certainly. But what if students, teachers, and parents are just as susceptible to misinterpreting scores in progressive assessments? Do progressive practices inoculate students, teachers, and parents from these fallacies? Or are these fallacies so ingrained that it is better to avoid quantification, including scores and grades, in progressive assessments altogether?
I believe test scores have a fragile but necessary compatibility with progressive pedagogy. Quantification offers a powerful framework for setting goals and monitoring progress, for both students and teachers. The discipline of measurement can be empowering when students and teachers embrace it, deepening appreciation of what and when students are learning. And, although this should not be the sole justification, many students will enter less progressive educational spaces in the future. Preparing them with improvement-oriented interpretations of their scores and grades can avoid a disheartening transition and ensure a lifelong learning orientation.
If scoring and grading can so easily disrupt progressive pedagogy, how can progressive educators use it wisely? I think at least three principles can help. First, the responsibility of measurement and evaluation must be shared and developed collaboratively, never held solely by the teacher nor solely by one student over another. Second, educators and parents must work to orient interpretation of any test score to improvement and growth along the learning continuum, including orienting the classroom community towards collective responsibility for that growth. Third, teachers should understand how fragile this compatibility between test scores and progressive pedagogy is. They must be prepared and trained for the work it takes to maintain progressive principles in the face of the three fallacies I described above.
Our weakness to numbers is “in the water” of our society. It takes work to overcome, to find strength in numbers. I believe this work is possible, necessary, and hopefully, even joyous.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Andrew Ho is the Charles William Eliot Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a psychometrician whose research aims to improve the design, use, and interpretation of test scores in educational policy and practice. Professor Ho is a director of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and has served on the governing boards for the National Council on Measurement in Education and the National Assessment of Educational Progress. He holds his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and his M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University. Before graduate school, he taught Creative Writing and Physics at Punahou School, AP Physics in Ojai, California, and summer school Science at his alma mater, Hanahau‘oli School.
