Let's Measure What's Worth Measuring

By Hyman Bass

Education reform revolves around three central issues: what children should learn, how they should be taught, and how progress should be measured. Ask people in the education community which of those three areas is the least developed, and my suspicion is that most would answer the last. In contrast to curriculum and teaching standards, the state of the art for assessment standards is primitive and the needed departures from past practice profound.

Mathematics education is no exception. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has articulated and built support for some of the most expert and enlightened thinking about curriculum and teaching standards. But in assessing achievement, the mathematics community is still in a period of intense and diverse experimentation governed by new and yet to be fully understood principles.

Curriculum, teaching, and assessment must be integrated and mutually supportive elements in the educational process, each serving common goals. Assessment, in particular, must cease to be an autonomous enterprise that is designed principally for efficiency and economy of administration without sufficient regard for the significance of what is measured or its...