Testing problem

By Mark Peterson

The United States and Korea both suffer from the malady within education of too much testing, relying on the test, and test-centered curriculum. As bad as the situation has become in the U.S., it’s much worse in Korea.

The educational product is better in Korea; Korean students have a much higher graduation rate (from both high school and college), and Korean students who come to the U.S. have high standing among their peers in American schools. But still there are some drawbacks to the school system in Korea that is so heavily centered on the exam.

And it’s not just the exam in Korea. It’s the kind of exam. It’s the multiple choice, what we call “bubble sheet” exam where the student chooses between three or four or even five choices. This kind of exam leads to a stultified educational process ― everything must be reduced to a simple outcome.

Not all outcomes can be simplified to a single sentence among five that a student has to choose. When complex topics are reduced to such a simple solution important nuance and even core meaning can be distorted.

For example, take the question of “how old is Korean history?” And consider multiple choice options of A. 10,000 years old. B. 5,000 years old. C. about 2,000 years old. D. 1,348 years old. E. 68 years old. If you have to choose one, most people would select B, 5,000 years old. But in reality each answer is correct. A marks some of the oldest archaeological finds in Korea. B is either a copy of Chinese claims of antiquity, or an approximation of the time when Dangun ruled. C is when written records in China first start to talk about the proto-Koreans, and is probably the best answer of these five options. D is the answer if you mean Korea began as a unified entity with the Silla unification of the peninsula in 668. And E is the answer if you are referring to the founding of the Republic of Korea as a political entity that still exists today.

A better exam question would be: “Describe the origins of Korea in an essay the covers different interpretations of what would be a starting point for Korean history.” The answer could not be reduced to a bubble sheet, but the student would have to write several paragraphs explaining the various options for deciding when Korean history began.

The obvious objection to this proposal is the difficulty in correcting the exam. The thought of grading essay exams boggles the mind of those who can only think of the supposed scientific method of grading bubble sheets with a computer – it’s too beautiful for words for the administrators who find it easy to correct by a computer, and for the test givers who are concerned with accusations of bias or unfairness or preferential treatment. There is even the assumption that the only fair test, the only objective evaluation of a student’s knowledge, is the bubble sheet exam.

Until recently this question of objectively correcting an essay was so difficult that few tried to give essay exams on a wide scale. Essay exams on a classroom scale are common in Ivy League and other major universities. This writer studied for six years at Harvard University and never once saw a bubble sheet exam. But to give a nation-wide exam with thousands of test takers seemed impossible. Until recently.

Now the American exam that indicates high school achievement has developed the “AP” test in various subjects. AP stands for “advanced placement” and means that if a high school student takes an AP course (in one of several subjects that have special curriculum prepared) and then passes the national-standard exam at the end of the course, the student can get college credit for the course. That means the student has the credit on the student’s record and does not need to take the course again in college. Some students, who take several AP courses, can actually shorten their college work by one semester or even more.

The key to administering the AP exam is the grading. The test is not given on a bubble sheet, but rather is a so-called essay exam. How is it graded? Committees of selected, highly competent teachers meet and read each exam. Each exam is read by two teachers, who if they agree give the grade they agree on. If there is a disagreement, a third teacher, a kind of arbitrator reads the exam and votes with one or the other of the first two graders.

I know about the world history exam. Each subject has a separate committee and each meets in a different city in the U.S. The world history AP test graders meet in Salt Lake City. When the test was first given about ten years ago, there were 70 graders. Now, there are over 1,000. They meet for a week-long period of intense work and complete the grading in that time.

Maybe the Korean “sunung” exam should contemplate such a method. If they did the creativity, writing ability, and maturity of knowledge of the wonderful, world-class students of Korea could improve that much more. It would be a much better process than the old bubble sheet exam.

Mark Peterson works as professor at the Korean department at Brigham Young University and can be reached at markpeterson@byu.edu.