J. Pharoah Doss: Achievement test and junk excuses for failure

Getty Images The difference between achievement tests and aptitude tests is that achievement tests measure what students have learned, whereas aptitude tests evaluate their potential to learn. It’s self-explanatory, right? According to Livia Gershon’s essay A Short History of Standardized Tests (2015), the earliest widely adopted standardized school tests were aimed at measuring aptitude rather than achievement. Testing aimed to discover talented students and avoid wasting resources on ‘slow children.’ This coincided with the rise of academic tracking to set students on a career path that was appropriate for them. In the 1960s, the federal government began promoting new achievement tests to evaluate educational methods and schools. The importance of those assessments rose over the decades as the globalizing economy focused attention on schools’ ability to produce qualified workers. Gershon suggested another reason for achievement tests that wasn’t self-explanatory: to evaluate teaching techniques and school effectiveness. Chalkbeat Chicago reported two months ago that Chicago public schools’ performance on state tests had returned to pre-pandemic levels. The only problem is that the pre-pandemic level was not particularly impressive. This year, 31 percent of Chicago’s public elementary school students were proficient in reading, up from 26 percent in 2023 and 28 percent...