Right. Students, teachers, parents, and bystanders all seem to have the problem of forgetting that the purpose of education is to become educated. Getting a deg

Right. Students, teachers, parents, and bystanders all seem to have the problem of forgetting that the purpose of education is to become educated. Getting a degree is not the point. Getting grades is not the point. Learning is the point. The only reason to give tests is to gauge how much students have learned so this information can be passed on (to the students so they can tell if they're doing well, to employers so they know if the student knows the material). Tests have no inherent value. If there is a better way to tell if students are learning (and I'd wager that there usually is), no test should be given at all. I almost never studied in college (because I figured that if I hadn't learned the material by test time, cramming wouldn't help), and I didn't care about my grades (a professor once forgot to bring the graded tests to class and said we could come by his office to get our grades; I told him I didn't care what my grade was, and he was shocked). I cared whether I was doing well or not, and generally I could judge that for myself. When I did get bad grades (which was rare because I took my education very seriously), I either knew why already or was quickly made aware of something I didn't know but needed to know. The most helpful grade I ever got was a D on my first English paper. It's the lowest grade I've ever gotten in my life, but by showing me what I did wrong, the professor helped me improve my writing so that I never got a bad grade on an essay again. All that said, the test needs to be given again. Some students who got the test could have been using it to study, some could have been using it to memorize answers. Students memorizing answers don't deserve good grades, so the test should be designed to fail them. Students using the test to study weren't cheating, but there's no way to tell that they weren't cheating without testing them again to see if they still do well. In order to keep their grades meaningful, they should be tested again. For an A to mean anything, there has to be the possibility of an F. If students who weren't learning anything were able to get A's, then there's a problem.