Commentary: What Policy Makers Who Mandate Tests Should Know About the New Psychology of Intellectual Ability and Learning

Abstract

This volume addresses itself to policy makers but is inaccessible to them. These chapters, written by some of the most prominent researchers in contemporary psychology, are long, dense, and complex. Can it be imagined that a state legislator, concerned about highway funding one day and re-election the next, would sit down some evening and digest the contents of this book? Does one imagine, even, that school board members whose purview is focussed on educational issues will read and reread these pages so as to reframe their conceptions of learning and assessment? And why should policy makers want to know about psychological theory or what psychologists think about assessment? Because, many educational policy decisions about categorical programs for handicapped children, compensatory education, grade-to-grade promotion standards, or mandated accountability tests are based implicitly on policy makers’ own “theories” about what conditions of education will foster student learning. If they are unaware of new research findings about how children learn, policy makers are apt to rely on their own implicit theories which most probably were shaped by the theories that were current when they themselves attended school. Scientific knowledge about the development of intellectual ability and learning is vastly different today than what was known 40 or 50 years ago. Some things that psychologists can prove today even contradict the popular wisdom of several decades ago. Therefore, if policy makers proceed to implement outmoded theories or tests based on old theories, they might actually subvert their intended goal--of providing a rigorous and high quality education for all students.