It's important to consider what we want a standardized test to measure. Is it to check that students have learned the curriculum? Is it to evaluate abilities fo

It's important to consider what we want a standardized test to measure. Is it to check that students have learned the curriculum? Is it to evaluate abilities for future prospects? Current tests seem to skew toward the former, and the article suggests they should do more of the latter. One wonders what a pure test for abilities would look like. The biggest factors in predicting long-term success are intelligence, knowledge, and conscientiousness. A hypothetical "how good you are at life" test could look something like this: 1. For intelligence, a straight-up IQ test. Raven's Progressive Matrices[1] is an excellent candidate. It can measure almost the entire human range of IQ, and it has little cultural bias. Heck, it doesn't even require literacy. 2. For knowledge, the format would be similar to existing tests, with one caveat: it must be very broad; so broad that no one person could know everything on it. To keep the length reasonable, one could use random sampling. Just as a vocabulary test need not ask the definition for every word in the dictionary, so too could a knowledge test remain accurate without asking for a copy of Wikipedia. To prevent cheating, it would be crucial to keep the exact questions secret each year. 3. Conscientiousness is the hardest to test, because it requires measuring one's ability to work hard over a long time. Besides self-reports, the only short test for conscientiousness involves telling the test taker that the task is unimportant. If they know the truth, the jig is up and they'll work hard. This sort of test would be extremely hard to game. Training helps RPM very little. Studying for the knowledge section would help one's score, but it would have the side-effect of increasing one's overall knowledge. The biggest wrinkle is the conscientiousness evaluation. It either requires honesty on the part of the test-taker or trickery on the part of the test-giver. While interesting to ponder, I doubt such a test will ever exist. It's not just students and parents who want to be able to game tests. School boards and other organizations want to be able to show improvement over time. If they can't teach the test, their true effectiveness (or lack thereof) might be revealed. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven's_Progressive_Matrices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven's_Progressive_Matrices