Testing is an integral part of the education process. How else can teachers, school boards, parents, and students know whether what is being taught has, in fact, been learned? A colleague of mine once listened patiently as I rattled on about "a great lesson I just taught", and then quietly said, I know you taught a great lesson, but did the students learn a great lesson.

Like it or not, what we teach and what pupils actually learn can only be determined by some type of testing, and no one can be happy with the sort of tests many of us are creating for our classes. Teachers need help in learning how to construct and interpret the tests they create for their classes.

Desktop publishing can be extremely useful in presenting excerpts from existing printed matter that deal with test construction procedures. Even articles and manuals on testing produced twenty or thirty years ago are often valuable.

The segment produced here is excerpted from a 56-page manual titled Improving the Classroom Test: A Manual of Test Construction Procedures for the Classroom Teacher prepared by Mr. Sherman Tinkelman, then the Asst.. Commissioner for Examinations and Scholarships at the N.Y. State Education Department. It was my good fortune to hear a talk based on much that appears in the manual that was given by Mr. Victor A Taber, then the New York State Director of the Division of Educational Testing. Thirty-five years later, I can still recall vividly the impression made by the clarity and practical nature of his presentation. I was convinced then, and I remain convinced today, that the classroom test plays a key role as an instrument of instruction when properly prepared and administered.

Complaints have been raised about assessment tests, and there may be good reason to agree with many of those complaints. But what about the tests that classroom teachers administer every day? Do they measure up to acceptable standards for validity and reliability? It is not enough to complain vaguely that testing stifles creativity and forces teachers to teach for the test. There will be tests, and there must be tests. The real question is what kinds of tests will we use in our classrooms.

(Jack Abramowitz)