Information Technology Reference
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curricula, we no longer must choose between tests that are standardized and tests
that are educative aids.
Secondly, the dichotomy between testing for general capabilities and testing for
specific content is rendered moot. Research reveals that skills that are conventionally
thought of as general skills, such as those for abstract reasoning, critical thinking,
or academic writing, unfold along unique pathways
in specific content areas
. Thus,
just as a score on a DiscoTest is both standardized and educative, it is also indicative
of a range of general skills as they are exercised in specific content areas. These
skills are demonstrated when students explain their thinking in written responses.
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Thirdly, DiscoTests overcome the dichotomy between testing to prepare the
workforce and testing to foster critically minded citizens. This classic dichotomy
is an artifact of an earlier era, before postindustrial conditions characterized large
segments of the world and information technologies created a networked polyvo-
cal global public sphere. Today, we face unique conditions that render traditional
ideas about the nature of socialization and adult life obsolete. Patterns of par-
enting, friendship, work, marriage, and political involvement have shifted rapidly
away from predictability toward diverse individualized pathways of socialization
with multiple outcomes and divergent views of success (Arnett, 2004; Beck, 2001).
This complexity and heterogeneity should be met by a flexible educational system
capable of responding to the unique needs of an increasingly diverse population of
students. Such a system, if it is to maintain rigor and efficacy, will need a testing
infrastructure that is standardized and customizable, broad and flexible, one that
integrates basic knowledge about learning into new contexts and applications—one
that rewards good thinking rather than right answers. DiscoTests do not have right
answers. They are designed to provide students with many opportunities to apply
their knowledge to the kinds of problems they will face in the real world—messy,
open-ended problems without simple answers.
We have thus touched on the philosophical issues at the heart of testing reform.
The contemporary testing infrastructure set constraints on pedagogical options and
structures the distribution of opportunities and resources. Moreover, as many have
noted (e.g., Hursh, 2008; Dewey, 1916), the reward systems of schools act as
proxies for the general values of society. Tests teach students—both indirectly
and directly—what is deemed valuable in the sociocultural context they inhabit.
Thus a new testing infrastructure will have wide ranging implications, from class-
room practice to college admissions and beyond. Redesigning large-scale testing
infrastructures means, in part, recasting how social values are operationalized. The
possibilities for building fundamentally new types of tests, based on the new science
of learning and human development, allows us to transcend narrow debates about
the goals of schooling and to help people learn better.
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It is important to note that leaning disabled students or students whose native language is not the
language of instruction and assessment will need appropriate accommodations, probably along the
lines of the principles of
Universal Design For Learning
(see Rose & Meyer, 2002).
