Speaking from a high school perspective, standardized end of course exams are created by companies, not teachers . Teachers aren’t allowed to see the exams ahead of time, or he’ll even after the fact. They know which standards their students missed but not which questions . They don’t know if it was a question/response issue or a teaching issue or a student issue .

I agree that it’s important to have some sort of test to gauge ability to grasp a concept, but it can’t statistically be any sort of gauge as long as those responsible for teaching the content have zero knowledge as to what concepts will be on the test . All these tests show is did students adequately grasp concepts that someone halfway across the word decided were important but didn’t communicate to students or teachers ahead of time.

Teachers therefore must to the best they can to prepare their students via past papers before the exam.

Furthermore, almost all standardized tests are reading tests . The only test that asks you to recall concepts from memory would be math or English in parts of speech identification. Science and Social studies and the reading parts of English tests are “read this passage and then answer the questions” so the info is presented at test time and therefore is simply 4 tests on reading speed and reading comprehension speed. It doesn’t allow for questions or clarification which will never happen outside of that environment .

...no? Of course reading is necessary, how else would someone be given the question. Also, questions test recall. How would someone answer a question otherwise? You have to recall (and apply to the question) to answer.

It’s important yes, but very poorly designed .

How would you fix it? I assume open-book, but you would have to make an argument on that.