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• Speech Writing /

Speech On Should Exams be Banned

• Updated on  
• Dec 15, 2023

According to NCRB Data, 864 out of 10,732 youngsters under the age of 18 years died by suicide. This life ending, out of peer pressure, rose to 13,089 in 2021. These statistics do not reflect the numbers, but they remember how uneasy it is for children to face pressure just for the name of studies. 

In the world of technology, when things are just a few seconds away from every human, testing knowledge and skills is no longer theoretical. Academic institutions focusing more on hands-on experience celebrate success and give a different perspective to the present and the future in real-time. 

But as every coin has two sides, the same here is the heated topic of exams being banned or not, which is just not one-sided. On the one hand, old traditions still hold books and bags firmly, and on the other hand, some people believe in a practical approach without any mental stress and anxiety.

In this writing, we will try to understand whether the big and all-time hot topic, whether exams should be banned, still holds relevance or whether people have grown smarter to know that there is life beyond learning from books.

Also Read: Top 6 Effective Classroom Teaching Methods

2-Minute Speech On Should Exams Be Banned Speech

‘Hello and welcome to everyone present here. Today, I will be presenting a speech on ‘Should Exams be Banned?’ One of my friends with a twelve-year-old daughter was scrolling down on Netflix. As it was March, the peak time of pre-board examinations, I asked her about her preparation out of curiosity.’

‘She smiled back at me and asked me to chill, as the school doesn’t support examinations and goes for fun learning via classroom practical experience. Since there was no peer pressure of any review, she also planned a vacation with friends.’ 

‘Although the example was fictitious, it cannot be denied that some schools do not support pen and paper for examination; they believe in fun learning and remembering.’

‘Are school bags becoming so heavy that students cannot see the bright future? Can´t testing of studies cannot be turned on with practical learning, which turns off the pressure and makes learning fun?’

‘There might be people who will support examinations, as according to them, bookish knowledge cannot be replaced with practical and real-time learning. But what if we helped tests with adventure, like in Australia, Finland, Shanghai, and Canada?’

‘In the words of Thomas Edison, “Tomorrow is my exam but I don’t care, a single paper can’t decide my future.” Examinations are just a way to test your knowledge, and doing it with a pen and paper is unnecessary. Replace everything with expertise and practical experience and build a new world of learning. 

Thank you.’

Also Read: Essay on Education System

10 Lines on Should Exams Be Banned 

1.  No examination leads to exploration of real-world scenarios, which helps the students to learn with real experience.

2. Some students are born brilliant and do well in classrooms because they utilize their potential by removing the anxiety of last-moment examinations.

3. Interactive sessions create a broad definition of success, which is beyond classrooms. 

4. Examinations are no guarantee, as there is a distinct and dynamic future beyond academics.

5. No examination creates new learning styles and easy-to-go practical methods.

6. Without examinations, creating a cooperative learning environment is healthy for students.

7. If discussed with no peer pressure of examinations, children’s chances of comprehensive understanding raise the bar. 

8. No examination is the door to creativity and logical thinking.

9. As there will be no static examination pattern, the chances of creative learning styles will be enhanced. 

10. No examination with more creativity and hands-on experience will lead to more potential preparation for challenges.

Also Read: Importance of Education in Development

Examinations could be more effective in terms of creativity and exposure of talent. Moreover, tests stress students, sometimes leading to disinterest in studies.

Henry Fischel, an American businessman, invented examinations in the 19th century.

Examinations calculate grades and marks, setting a benchmark for numbers instead of fun and learning. When there is no fun in education, students cannot figure out what interests them; hence, it kills their creativity.

Examinations have a set of standards that lead the students on the way, followed for years. 

Many students cannot handle the peer pressure of the examinations. Due to this, their health gets affected, leading to depression and mental health issues.

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Deepika Joshi

Deepika Joshi is an experienced content writer with expertise in creating educational and informative content. She has a year of experience writing content for speeches, essays, NCERT, study abroad and EdTech SaaS. Her strengths lie in conducting thorough research and ananlysis to provide accurate and up-to-date information to readers. She enjoys staying updated on new skills and knowledge, particulary in education domain. In her free time, she loves to read articles, and blogs with related to her field to further expand her expertise. In personal life, she loves creative writing and aspire to connect with innovative people who have fresh ideas to offer.

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Should exams be abolished?

F or young people, exams, like death and taxes, were once certainties of life. That was the case, at least, in a society that couldn’t have imagined a pandemic shutting it down and forcing it to adapt as radically as it has. The alterations coronavirus has forced us to make have allowed us to see what is possible that we previously thought impossible, and that includes a world without exams.

Even before the pandemic and the forced cancellation of both GCSEs and A-Levels for two years in a row, there was a growing consensus that the examination system is broken and unfit for purpose. Particular concern has been expressed about the relationship of more rigorous exams, introduced by Michael Gove under David Cameron’s coalition government, to the decline in young people’s mental health in recent years. A recent survey revealed that young people in Britain are the unhappiest in Europe, with only 64% of them experiencing ‘high life satisfaction’ (the happiest young people were found to be Romanians, of whom 85% reported high life satisfaction). More troublingly, research conducted in 2018 revealed that 20% of girls and 10% of boys had self harmed or attempted suicide at some point in their lives. Gus O’Donnell, formerly head of the civil service, blamed this, in a report by The Guardian , at least partly on an “addiction to exams”. 

After the cancellation of exams for the second year in a row, the voices calling for their abolition grew louder. The idea in particular of abolishing GCSEs is gaining a great deal of momentum, especially among journalists, social commentators and teachers. The Times reported in November 2019 that heads from the Girls’ School Association had said that GCSEs “belong in the Victorian times” and are “outmoded and draining” . While government officials have not commented on the dilemma quite to the same extent, Robert Halfon, MP for Harlow and chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, described GCSEs as “pointless”, calling for them to be scrapped and A-Levels to be replaced with a baccalaureate-style system containing a mixture of arts, science and vocational subjects. 

Critics have pointed out that the UK remains out of step with its European neighbours with GCSEs still in place, since it is the only country in the continent to test pupils at 16 and then at 18

Even more significantly, Lord Kenneth Baker, who was Education Secretary when GCSEs were introduced in 1986, has called for them to be scrapped. He has argued that they have become redundant now that pupils must legally stay in school or training until they are eighteen. Critics have also pointed out that the UK remains out of step with its European neighbours with GCSEs still in place, since it is the only country in the continent to test pupils at 16 and then at 18. Adding SATs for pupils in Year 2 and Year 6, they argue, makes British children some of the most over-tested in the world. 

By contrast, the Department for Education has shown no sign of supporting calls for GCSEs to be scrapped. In response to Halfon’s comments, they defended GCSEs as ‘gold-standard exams’ . Similarly, Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector of Ofsted, rebuked claims that children are overtested in the UK, dismissing the argument as a ‘myth’ and suggesting instead that examination is good for both students and teachers. 

The outcome of cancelling GCSEs and A-Levels last summer was far from adequate, with an algorithm used for moderation downgrading grades given by teachers by up to three grades, especially in deprived areas. This was taken by some as a reason to rethink criticisms of the exam system, evidence that exams were in fact necessary and the only fair way to determine the qualifications pupils leave school with. 

This is a meritocratic argument, but the flip-side of this is that exams were never truly fair to begin with. The attainment gap between pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers speaks for this, as well as the variation in results from pupils who go to schools in affluent and deprived areas. Pupils from wealthier families are also afforded more support with their exams – their parents can afford to hire tutors or buy expensive revision books. They are also more likely to have sufficient study space and time. 

Recent research from King’s College London found that teacher assessments are equally as reliable as standardised exams at predicting educational success

Many oppose the abolition of exams because the potential alternatives are not up to the same standard. One option could be to make the temporary system of giving pupils grades permanent – teachers would decide, from the performance of pupils in the classroom, their final grade (though obviously without an algorithm to interfere with their judgments). Recent research from King’s College London found that teacher assessments are equally as reliable as standardised exams at predicting educational success. 

The major concern that arises, of course, could be bias. 

Concern has been raised by students over negative relationships with their teachers affecting their grades: an anonymous student writing for the Independent mentioned a friend declaring “My life is over,” after mitigation measures for exams were announced during the reveal of the third lockdown. 

Coursework as an alternative removes some of the stress and anxiety of exams by allowing pupils to spread their work over a period of time

Another option could be to replace exams with coursework. Although not favoured by the coalition government that reformed exams and removed much of the coursework, it potentially removes some of the stress and anxiety of exams by allowing pupils to spread their work over a period of time. It could also be argued that it is better preparation for further or higher education, where coursework is used far more frequently, especially for humanities subjects. It is also much more similar to tasks that would be expected in the workplace, with the obvious expectation that pupils won’t find anything resembling exams awaiting them when they enter the world of work. 

However, part of the reason that coursework has been removed for the most part from exam syllabuses is concerns about cheating, through copying another student or even through the use of essay mills. By contrast, there are far fewer possibilities to cheat in an exam, and invigilation remains incredibly strict to prevent this from happening. 

Scrapping exams permanently would also have implications for schools. These could be positive, on the one hand, especially from a financial perspective. Exams are expensive for schools, especially for subjects that are less popular, and without them schools could be afforded a greater budget – potentially vital as ten years of austerity have left them overstretched. If only GCSEs were scrapped, a question mark hangs over the schools that don’t have sixth forms, which would mean they would not offer any exams at all. University admissions would also potentially be affected without GCSEs, as universities will have no record of a student’s exam performance if they have not taken any AS-Levels in Year 12. 

With the government preoccupied by the vaccine rollout and decisions over lockdown measures, it is unlikely that any more radical reforms to the exams system will be implemented in the short to medium term, especially not when barely half a decade has passed since the last ones. Regardless, though scrapping A-Levels is harder to justify, the calls in particular for an end to GCSEs are unlikely to go away. Unless the school leaving age is lowered, which is also unlikely, there will always be an argument that they are no longer relevant and thus the stress they cause both pupils and teachers is unnecessary. 

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Why Standardized Testing Needs To Be Abolished

“If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.” — Michelle Obama

The amount of time students spend taking standardized tests during school has grown significantly in recent years. America’s youth are required to give up valuable class time to take federally-mandated assessments that are used to compare them, their schools and their states to others. Standardized tests are generally multiple choice and focused mainly on English and math, though sometimes social studies and science are included in the tests, as well.

The point of standardized testing is to determine the average score of schools, states and the nation and to compare and contrast them. This is to see where help should be provided and to decide what should be done for America and its education system to progress.

However, it is appropriate to consider whether all these tests are actually helping, if these assessments students must take so frequently really will help our nation’s educational systems and the students they serve to make progress.

Standardized testing started off with seemingly innocent intentions, but today it has grown destructive to America’s public education system. Big companies that create the tests won’t stop making tests even though they cause harm in our school systems, because they profit and grow wealthy from those school systems using their tests.

According to evidence, one of the many problems with the tests is that the tests, for one, have no evidence supporting the idea that they are in any way beneficial. Many consider the No Child Left Behind legislation to have lowered the national success rate in education. A study by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that “available evidence does not give strong support for the use of test-based incentives to improve education.” Scholars agree that a single test score or a set of test scores don’t really measure what students have learned in a test or at school. The tests don’t cover many skills and leave out material.

Additionally, standardized tests do not accurately measure how much a student has learned or his or her aptitude. The tests are used solely for many important decisions, so if you have a score that is below excellent, there could be serious and unintended ramifications that were not even meant for you by those who designed the test.

Test scores are used for many decisions. For instance, they were widely used to label schools. Schools tagged as “failing” can diminish teacher and administrative pay, encourage parents to move their students to another school and ultimately lead to the schools’ closure. Standardized tests are also used to determine how effective teachers are, whether a school should be stripped of certain freedoms and be placed under purely Common Core standards, without electives or fun, and whether a school should lose funds. On the other hand, the schools that have better test results often receive rewards, such as more funding.

Schools spend great amounts time — not to mention money — to secure assessments and make sure there is no cheating, but students are more likely to cheat as more pressure is placed upon them to perform well.

Tests do not provide any insight to what should be done to improve the scores and to help the students succeed, so they serve no true purpose or benefit to schools or their students.

These tests generally do not contain enough material to really be able to evaluate one’s strengths and weaknesses. According to the National Academy, the left-out information is most often “the portion of the curriculum that deals with higher levels of cognitive functioning and application of knowledge and skills.”

Standardized testing leads to less time learning, a more narrow curriculum and more time overall taking tests. This disrupts school routines, lessens time teaching and learning. Class time is spent on teaching to the test, practice tests and learning test-taking strategies.

The tests have been said many times to stifle creative thinking, to fail to effectively measure the achievement gap between social groups, and to demean one’s love of learning and self-confidence.

Schools spend great amounts time — not to mention money — to secure assessments and to make sure there is no cheating, but students are more likely to cheat as stakes rise and as more pressure is placed upon them to perform well.

Evaluations of teachers and decisions to close schools that perform poorly use test scores as the main source of judgement. Schools that receive budget cuts from the government based on test results are forced into firing teachers, raising class sizes, and losing programs of value. This process is harmful, but unfair decisions based on test scores alone continue to be made.

A proposed bill in the recently concluded state legislative session, House Bill 2730 , would have restricted standardized testing in public school, a critical step in the right direction for education in Hawaii. The bill would have limited “public school student participation in standardized tests, prohibit(ed) the use of standardized tests scores for evaluation purposes, authorize(d) standardized testing exemptions, and require(d) the Board of Education to provide notice of the right to opt out of standardized testing.”

Unfortunately, the bill was killed after passing only one reading. Why?

Restraints on these federally mandated assessments is necessary for Hawaii and our entire nation to move back up on international rankings of student knowledge and application.

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Exams should be abolished speech

Exams should be abolished

Exams – a word that many students dread to hear, a word that many students fear of, a word that seems to have the magical power to transform a happy and cheerful person into a frustrated and nervous wreck.

What are exams and should they been done away with entirely?

Exams are longer and more comprehensive versions of tests held every term. Initially created to monitor and check how a student was performing academically, they now have so much more pressure on them that students are burning the midnight oil to study for an exam. This results in some students becoming ill due to stress and lack of sleep. They have become more and more stressful and, even worse, a constriction to the ideal of learning.

It is a well known fact that when it comes to exams, students compete, not only with themselves, but with other students. They no longer want to see an increase in their knowledge, but want to beat other people to the top of the class. Even parents take exams as a race to see whose children are more intelligent.

Students shouldn’t be judged on their performance on one day when they might be ill. The exams might not be completely representative of the student’s skills as everyone can have a bad day.

They are a poor method of assessment as they don’t reflect the use of knowledge in a practical environment. They don’t reflect how well you’ll be able to use your knowledge in real world occupations.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Many successful individuals are bad at exams but can perform well under other methods of assessment such as essays and oral presentations which still prepare students in coping with pressure. Some people would argue that exams are not a fair assessment of intelligence and aren’t favourable to those with poor memory skills, those who suffer under pressure, and those who get so nervous in such situations that they shut down in exams. It’s very easy to know content but to completely fail an exam because you are nervous. They aren’t an accurate representation of a student’s knowledge as some people are just better at taking exams than others. If you happen to mess up in your exams due to stress or panic then your goals can disintegrate leaving you unable to reach your full potential and having to settle for second best. SATs are taking the pleasure out of learning for many students and pressurising teachers to ‘teach the test’ rather than teaching for meaning, understanding, critical thinking and pleasure. Should schools become exam result factories or institutions which create well-rounded human beings? This problem must be addressed to reduce the number of pupils who suffer from forms of neurosis or depression due to this country’s narrow minded approach to education.

Those students cramming in last-minute study will have to put aside their social lives, have to sacrifice their sleep and will be under great pressure and tension. Coursework is also a problem when you have exams and should not collide with exam revision.

In humanity subjects such as History, Geography and social sciences, analysis and application of what has been learned is important and cannot be assessed through exams.

If exams were abolished then students would have more time to learn new material instead of being tested and revising. Testing can be performed in many other ways than a 3 hour exam which decides your fate. The vast majority of exams are based on the student’s ability to recall, in the space of 2 or 3 hours, details of a subject which is generally vast in its scope.

The vital point is that those students who enjoy greatest success are not necessarily those who have the best grasp of the subject, but most often those who have successfully anticipated the questions which will appear on the paper. This is, of course, not the only problem. Exams create unnecessary pressure and the poorly planned exam schedules only add to this. Who would deny that they would rather have 5 exams spread over 2 weeks rather than 5 exams in the space of 4 days, leaving little time to readjust?  Furthermore, exams aren’t adequate preparation for working life and test only your memory of a subject rather than all-round knowledge that properly conceived coursework can afford. It is undoubtedly important to test knowledge as well as all round skills, but this can be done much more fairly through methods such as essays and the appropriate use of coursework than through the traditional hellish world of end-of-year exams.

Fairer forms of assessment include more coursework, oral presentation, continuous assessments throughout the year and term papers as well as project work.

Education should be more about what is drawn out of people that what is drummed into them and this is not done through examinations.

In modern day education, familiarity with word processing, desktop publishing and powerpoint is a valuable asset and whilst essays and oral presentations allow the student to demonstrate these skills, traditional exams require students to write essays with a pen and paper – a very unnatural endeavour in the 21 st  century.

Are exams a valid form of assessment of simply a memory test? You decide.

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Opinion: Standardized Testing Should Be Abolished

In recent years, colleges have been under fire for the many faults in their admissions process. The 2019 college admissions scandal was a criminal conspiracy involving bribery, money laundering and application fabrication, with notable people such as Felicity Huffman and Lori Laughlin, that worked to sway admissions decisions at the top universities in America. 

The scandal is one of the most recent proofs of how college admissions is an unfair playing field. Whether it be because of legacy students or huge family donations to a school, wealth and power play a vital part in the game that is the college admissions system. 

Standardized testing is the latest component of the college admissions process to be criticized as it has proven to be an outdated and inaccurate assessment of one’s level of college preparedness.

One of the first things many tutors and teachers say to their students when preparing them for their upcoming test is that the SAT and the ACT are not measures of your intellectual abilities; they measure your ability to take a test. 

What do college admissions officers gain from knowing how well you can take a test?

In theory, standardized testing is a pragmatic way to assess what one has learned; however, it does not take into consideration external factors and conditions that may affect the way a student tests. Tests lack diversity, and they do not take into consideration the different types of students that will be taking the test. English learning students, unconventional thinkers, students with anxiety and simply bad test takers all suffer because they assess students homogeneously. 

Because these exams are so imperative in the world of education, it actually hinders the learning experience as people start “teaching the test” instead of fostering a challenging and critical learning environment. Standardized testing has only created a bunch of anxious students and teachers scrambling to master a test that they most likely will not find use for in the “real world.”

One test should not be the determining factor of a student’s college preparedness or intellect, especially when the origins of college admissions testing are inherently discriminatory towards marginalized communities. 

According to the National Education Association (NEA) , many white Anglo-Saxon nationalists in the 19th Century were worried about the infiltration of minorities into the American school system as more immigrants came into the U.S. Psychologist Carl Bringham, who claimed that African-Americans “were on the low end of the racial, ethnic, and/or cultural spectrum,” was one of the main developers of a test used to assess the aptitude of U.S army in World War I that segregated soldiers into units based on race and performance. This aptitude test heavily influenced the development of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or the SAT that we know of today. 

The SAT can be seen to have displayed evident bias towards minority groups from its very beginning. Years of research prove that even as the test evolved throughout the decades, the race and class barriers that the test inflicted withstood throughout the span of time. According to Fair Test research, students of color performed significantly lower on college admissions tests, preventing them from getting the merit scholarships they needed to attend a good college, thereby contributing to the drastic racial gaps and inequities in college acceptances and enrollment.

The average score nationwide on the reading section of the SAT was 429 for Black students last year–99 points behind the average for white students. Some may argue that these low scores for people of color are a result of lack of commitment, a racist viewpoint, or incompetence. However, a lot of other factors play a role in the different performances between races. Black and brown students often come from lower-income families compared to their white counterparts, preventing them from being able to afford private tutors and SAT and ACT classes.

Standardized testing is an outdated, inaccurate and unrealistic test of aptitude that does more detriment to the high school learning experience than help. The University of California Board has already unanimously voted to not require the SAT or ACT on student application as a lawsuit claims they are “deeply biased and provide no meaningful information about a student’s ability to succeed.” 

This has inspired many other schools like George Washington University and Hampshire College to follow their lead. Standardized testing is one of the many ways systemic racism still exists in society. It creates a huge barrier preventing applicants of color from achieving the education they deserve and perpetuates the prejudiced conditions that they live under today. 

Article by Kristal Maimo-Fokum of John F. Kennedy High School

Graphic by Khanh Nguyen of Richard Montgomery High School

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Blog post – Should we ban final exams?

For centuries, exams have played a central role in assessing student competencies. However, as the higher education landscape changes, there has been an increasing divide between educational practitioners about the benefits and drawbacks of exams. 

In the first debate from UQ’s Higher Ed Debate series , we examined this controversy and invited staff and students to present their views on the topic That we should ban final exams . We followed the common debate style of having two teams of three members, with one team supporting (affirmative) and one team opposing (negative) the topic.

Debate recording

Debate summary

Affirmative team – arguing in favour of banning final exams.

The affirmative team argued that exams under the status quo are not an effective means of assessing student knowledge or employability as they prioritise breadth over depth, test students’ ability to recall facts rather than prepare them for future employment, assess students by their penmanship and ability to write neatly rather than deep knowledge and assess students under time pressure without access to world knowledge (i.e. Google search), which is rarely the case in the real world.

They further argued that exams provide a poor learning experience as they encourage cramming which is an ineffective way of studying, carry an excessively large weight of the final grade which introduces a harmful level of stress and anxiety, lack inclusivity as they unfairly disadvantage those who are neurodivergent or have disabilities and lack accountability in terms of quality of marking and providing feedback. In addition, they argued that proctoring online exams introduces data privacy concerns that students should not have to bear. 

As a strategy to address concerns raised by the use of exams, they suggested the use of low-state, authentic, bite-size assessments that assess content at the end of each week or a short module.

Negative team – Arguing against banning final exams

The negative team responded that most of the points raised by the affirmative team relate to poorly developed exams rather than exams by nature. For example, it is possible to create open book exams that test your ability to authentically solve problems and apply knowledge, use oral exams to test employability factors beyond recalling facts or use a digital assessment platform to avoid issues related to poor handwriting and to increase marking accountability and provide feedback. Additionally, they outlined the importance of testing breadth in relation to recall-based questions. They also argued that even though industry-specific knowledge is widely accessible, as the expert in a domain, you're expected to know the content when you meet with a client rather than having Google open in front of you to search for answers. They highlighted two benefits that exams carry over bite-sized assignments:

• Final exams can critically assess your ability to apply knowledge from across all parts of the course rather than content related to a specific module.
• Exams enable students to develop the ability to work under stress under tight timelines, which gives them an employability advantage.

The team further argued that the affirmative team failed to provide any evidence of why alternative assessments to exams are any better. For example, if their argument is that academics are creating poor exams, why would the quality of alternative assessments they make be any better? In terms of anxiety and stress, turning exams into bite-sized assignments means many more overlapping deadlines across courses for a student, which itself is a source of anxiety. Accountability of marking is also a problem with assignments as tutors might be under time pressure to read and provide feedback on a long essay with very little given time. The use of team-based assessments may disadvantage students that are stuck in a bad team or might give an unfair advantage to free-riders. Oral presentations may also introduce stress and are unscalable, plus they take up a lot of students’ contact time. Work-integrated learning may introduce overhead funding for travel and attire and raise fairness concerns as the quality of the experience may vary significantly depending on the placement. 

Finally, they raised the important point of academic workload and viewing academics as a finite resource. Exams are a time-effective way of establishing how well a student has achieved learning outcomes, which have academic integrity embedded into them. While it is possible to replace them, alternatives would generally require significantly more time commitment, which maxed-out academics would find challenging to achieve.

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Associate Professor Hassan Khosravi

• Blog post – Am I over-assessing my students? Finding the bal...
• UQ professor appointed to influential higher education board

Education Secretary: Standardized Tests Should No Longer Be a ‘Hammer’

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Standardized tests should be used as “a flashlight” on what works in education not as “a hammer” to force outcomes, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said during a speech last week.

The statement reflects a shift in thinking since annual testing became federal law more than 20 years ago, and it echoes past comments from Cardona, who warned states against using 2022 NAEP scores punitively when they showed steep drops in reading and math in September.

But federal policies stemming from the two-decade-old No Child Left Behind Act and its successor, the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act, make it difficult for states to use standardized tests in any other way, policy experts say. And despite changing attitudes, there’s little indication that the nation’s schools will move away from the current form of test-based accountability anytime soon.

“It doesn’t matter what the sentiment is,” said Jack Schneider, an education professor and policy analyst at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell who is also an advocate for including alternative measures like school climate, teacher ability, and school resources in accountability policies. “The law is structured so that it really isn’t much of a flashlight.”

Cardona did not announce any new testing-related policies or plans for the Education Department in his Jan. 24 speech to educators , so it’s unclear if the agency plans to address concerns about test-based accountability through grants, waivers, or rulemaking. The department hasn’t announced any plans to revise standardized testing policy.

Still, his words reflect ever-changing opinions about standardized tests and what role they should play in evaluating school performance.

“He’s trying to bridge two eras,” Schneider said. “Right now, we are still very much in the era of test-based accountability because that’s the law. He also recognizes that’s not going to persuade very many people for much longer as a mechanism for school improvement.”

The lasting impact of No Child Left Behind

The debate over school accountability and standardized testing has been going on for over half a century, said Daniel Koretz, an education professor at Harvard University who has dedicated his research to high-stakes testing.

The original designers of standardized tests envisioned the tests as a way to measure individual students’ performance, not as an aggregate measure of schools’ performance, Koretz said.

They “were adamant that these tests cannot provide a complete measure of what we care about, what our goals of education are,” he said. “They’re necessarily incomplete.”

Despite that original intention, states and the federal government found standardized tests to be an efficient way to determine whether schools were performing to standards. And test proponents have said they’re necessary for ensuring English learners, students with disabilities, students of color, and low-income students don’t fall behind.

The government’s role in using tests to evaluate schools—rather than individual students—was solidified when former President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002.

The law, which had bipartisan backing and functioned as an update to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, required states to test students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school with a goal of bringing them all to a state-determined level of proficiency by the 2013-14 school year.

It also established sanctions for schools that failed to stay on track and make “adequate yearly progress” with test scores. The law gave states—among other measures—the power to shut down schools that missed achievement targets several years in a row. Waivers to the law during the Obama administration loosened some of these rules but also required states to set up systems to evaluate teachers in part based on student test performance.

“That enormously ramped up the pressure, particularly in low-achieving schools,” Koretz said. “At that point, teachers really had no choice. They really could either fail, cut corners, or cheat.”

The law was later reauthorized as the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 , which loosened the federal government’s role in K-12 schools, removed requirements that states evaluate teacher performance based on student outcomes, and gave states power to decide what should happen to schools that miss performance targets.

But the law maintained the standardized testing requirements established in NCLB.

“The heart of NCLB, which is test-based accountability, remains in place,” Schneider said.

Advocating for a balanced approach

Some who oppose test-based accountability aren’t against standardized tests themselves. Large-scale standardized tests are useful in measuring how students in a certain state or across the country are performing compared to their peers.

But they are also limited. Critics say they offer only a snapshot of a student’s understanding of core subjects, making it difficult to determine whether a student performed poorly because they weren’t taught the material or because of outside factors like their mood, health, or home life.

Instead, testing experts say they’d like to see a more balanced approach to standardized tests. That means having more coherence among the large number of state and national assessments so they build off each other and can better help inform instruction and curriculum, said Scott Marion, the executive director of the Center for Assessment, a nonprofit focused on improving assessment and accountability practices.

It also means measuring students’ progress over time and the skills they’ve acquired, not just changes in their scores from one test to another. Tests also need to provide feedback to teachers more quickly to be useful, Marion said.

“I don’t care that [a student] went up six points—that might be good,” Marion said. “But did she learn how to better organize her paragraphs, vary her sentence structure, things like that?”

States can help ease the burden of accountability on schools by using the more balanced approach, and some states have, Marion said. But unless there are changes to federal law there will always be pressure for schools to produce high test scores.

The political outlook

Cardona’s message indicates a shifting perspective on the role standardized tests play in society, but not much has been done to actually change the federal law that lays out standardized tests’ role.

The Education Department could establish waivers, giving states more flexibility to create pilot projects to improve testing systems. And Congress could rewrite the law to put less of a focus on accountability.

But ultimately improvement would require more respect for education, Koretz said.

“Education has a very low status in this country,” he said. “A lot of policymakers don’t respect teachers or any other educators. They don’t trust them. So, who are you going to trust to go in and evaluate schools if you don’t trust educators?”

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• Educational Assessment

Five Reasons to Stop Giving Exams in Class

• February 18, 2022
• Donald A. Saucier, PhD, Noah D. Renken, and Ashley A. Schiffer

It is a common, but not universal practice to administer exams to students in class (e.g., Rovai, 2000). Traditionally, students come to class and take exams silently and independently without any resources. They have a time-limit that is usually the length of the class. The exams may be multiple-choice, matching, short answer, essay, etc., but even if there are multiple versions of the exam, all students basically do the same thing in the same way. We believe there are several compelling reasons why we may want to stop giving exams in class. We acknowledge that many instructors have valid reasons for giving exams in class (e.g., alternative assessment plans require time and effort, concerns about academic dishonesty; Cramp et al., 2019; Still & Still, 2015), and we urge instructors to use the practices that best fit their teaching philosophies and needs of their specific classes. However, we wish to address the limitations of doing so and offer five reasons to consider to stop giving exams in class. We believe these recommendations may increase the engagement of instructors and students, which may enhance the success of our teaching and learning (Saucier, 2019a; Saucier, Miller, Martens, & Jones, in press).

1. Exams in class are unduly stressful.

Exams given in class are stressful for students (e.g., Zeidner, 2010) and instructors (Madara & Namango, 2016). The instructor and/or teaching assistant proctor the exam, which includes patrolling the classroom in search of signs of students cheating. There is a time limit. Students may not be able to sit in their regular seats if more students take the exam than regularly attend class (which is particularly troubling given potential effects of environmental contexts on students’ exam scores; Van Der Wege & Barry, 2008). The exams are often high stakes, making students anxious about the outcome. And, while some may argue that giving exams in class prepares students for the stress of real life (e.g., Durning et al., 2016), it does not seem like the in-class exam experience readily generalizes other contexts. In real life, we often get to look up information from outside resources and double check it before we use it. While we support challenging our students, we believe this type of stress may not be directly helpful.

2. Exams in class are not equitable.

While exams in class are generally stressful, they do not impact all students in the same way. Individuals may experience differing levels of test anxiety (Zeidner, 2010), which may be affected by their experiences of stereotype threat (e.g., Danaher & Crandall, 2008), the imposter phenomenon (e.g., Kumar & Jagacinski, 2006), and/or their general struggles with anxiety (e.g., Zunhammer et al., 2013). The added pressure of the testing situation and the potential high stakes of the exam may cause some students to systematically underperform. Further, some students may have circumstances that require testing accommodations (e.g., extended test time, distraction-free environments). It may be stigmatizing for those students to be unable to take the exam with their classmates and they may feel their absences are conspicuous (e.g., Timmerman & Mulvihill, 2015). Simply put, the ways that we traditionally administer in-class exams may not be fair for everyone.

3. Exams in class are logistically difficult to administer.

The process of administering exams in class may be unnecessarily convoluted. The physical act of passing out exams, particularly if there is more than one form of the exam, is difficult and time-consuming. If the class is large, some students may get their exams several minutes earlier than other students and thus have the advantage of having more time to take their exams. Students who come late may disturb their classmates and may not finish on time. Similarly, students who finish early may distract those who are still working. Proctoring the exam to monitor signs of academic dishonesty and to maintain exam security is a difficult and imperfect process. The subjective experience for instructors and teaching assistants who proctor the exams is aversive. Personally, we are possibly more anxious than our students when we administer exams in class, as we watch them silently and intently, and both worry about cheating and that our students will not do well.

4. Exams in class are not empathetic.

We believe that in class exams are not empathetic, student-focused, or inclusive. We have discussed areas of inequity above, but we also believe in-class exams traditionally do not provide the support or understanding of our students’ potential personal and academic challenges that allow them to successfully demonstrate their learning. Additionally, in-class exams often fail to provide students with opportunities for personalization or creativity. We believe that in-class exams often do not achieve the goals set forth by inclusive teaching philosophies (Lawrie et al., 2017) and empathetic course design perspectives (Engage the Sage, 2021).

5. Exams in class are not fun.

We acknowledge some students do enjoy taking exams (admittedly, one of us loved to take exams as a student), but many do not. When our students tell us about the most meaningful things they did in our classes, they do not talk about exams (nor do we when looking back at our experiences as students). Instead, our students tell us about activities, projects, missions, creative products, and research studies. These are the fun and more meaningful ways that students demonstrate and apply their learning. We fear traditional in-class exams may take the meaning out of the wonderful things we teach and learn and our classes.

What should we do?

We have provided five reasons why we should consider not giving exams in class. For some instructors, exams may still be necessary.  If so, consider redesigning the exam experience to at least partially resolve some of these issues. For instance, you could permit your students to take them when and where they want during a predetermined time span (e.g., online via your institution’s learning management system). Moreover, allowing your students to use resources like their textbooks and class notes may ease test anxiety (e.g., Parsons, 2008) while helping them provide deeper answers to the questions (e.g., Green et al., 2016). This may also alleviate issues of academic honesty—it is not cheating to use these materials if you allow them to. Another option would be to have your students write and take their own exams (i.e., “Exams By You”; Saucier, Schiffer, & Jones, under review). At the very least, consider lowering the stakes of your exams so that one assessment does not have an exaggerated impact on your students’ overall semester grade.

But maybe we don’t need to use exams at all. We would rather infuse empathy into our classes (Engage the Sage, 2021) and bring PEACE (Preparation, Expertise, Authenticity, Caring, Engagement; Saucier, 2019b; Saucier & Jones, 2020) to our students, and perhaps we can offer professional development to our colleagues to help them do so (Saucier, Jones, Renken, & Schiffer, in press). Maybe we can focus our assessments on allowing our students to demonstrate their learning in ways that are applicable to (and fulfilling for) them. We can provide our students with the opportunity to apply the information in more sophisticated ways than mere memorization. We can empower them to demonstrate their learning through projects, papers, videos they create, podcasts they record, and other creative products. We can provide them with guidelines and rubrics to support them. From our own experience, we have been more excited to get the products of these projects than to grade monotonous exams. Everything we assign comes back to us. Let us allow our students to demonstrate their learning in ways that are less anxiety-provoking, more equitable and inclusive, less difficult to administer, more empathetic, and more fun. Using these ideas, we can make assessment more meaningful and more enjoyable for our students and for us.

Donald A. Saucier, PhD (2001, University of Vermont) is a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar and professor of psychological sciences at Kansas State University. Saucier has published more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and is a fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and the Midwestern Psychological Association. His awards and honors include the University Distinguished Faculty Award for Mentoring of Undergraduate Students in Research, the Presidential Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Teaching Resource Prize. Saucier is also the faculty associate director of the Teaching and Learning Center at Kansas State University and offers a YouTube channel called “Engage the Sage” that describes his teaching philosophy, practices, and experiences.

Ashley A. Schiffer is also a doctoral student in the department of psychological sciences at Kansas State University. Her research often pertains to morality in relation to masculine honor ideology and/or military settings. She also works at Kansas State’s Teaching and Learning Center with Saucier and Renken to promote teaching excellence and contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Noah D. Renken is a doctoral student in the department of psychological sciences at Kansas State University. His research interests center on individual difference factors related to expressions of prejudice. Renken’s recent work has examined masculine honor ideology and the manifestation of attitudes towards stigmatized events (e.g., sexual violence, trauma). Noah also works in the Teaching and Learning Center at Kansas State University, where he collaborates with Saucier on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) projects.

Cramp, J., Medlin, J. F., Lake, P., & Sharp, C. (2019). Lessons learned from implementing              remotely invigilated online exams. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice ,      16(1), 10.

Danaher, K., & Crandall, C. S. (2008). Stereotype threat in applied settings re-examined. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38 (6), 1639-1655. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00362.x

Durning, S. J., Dong, T., Ratcliffe, T., Schuwirth, L., Artino, A. R., Boulet, J. R., & Eva, K. (2016). Comparing open-book and closed-book examinations: a systematic review. Academic Medicine , 91(4), 583-599.

Engage the Sage. (2021). Engage the sage: The empathetic course design perspective [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/-79FHyNd128

Green, S. G., Ferrante, C. J., & Heppard, K. A. (2016). Using open-book exams to enhance student learning, performance, and motivation. Journal of Effective Teaching , 16(1), 19-35.

Kumar, S., & Jagacinski, C. M. (2006). Imposters have goals too: The imposter phenomenon and its relationship to achievement goal theory. Personality and Individual differences, 40 (1), 147-157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.05.014

Lawrie, G., Marquis, E., Fuller, E., Newman, T., Qiu, M., Nomikoudis, M., … & Van Dam, L. (2017). Moving towards inclusive learning and teaching: A synthesis of recent literature. Teaching & learning inquiry , 5(1), 9-21.

Madara, D. S., & Namango, S. S. (2016). Faculty Perceptions on Cheating in Exams in Undergraduate Engineering. Journal of Education and Practice, 7(30), 70-86.

Parsons, D. (2008). Is there an alternative to exams? Examination stress in engineering courses. International Journal of Engineering Education, 24 (6), 1111-1118.

Rovai, A. P. (2000). Online and traditional assessments: what is the difference?. The Internet and higher education, 3 (3), 141-151.

Saucier, D. A. (2019a). “Having the time of my life”: The trickle-down model of self and student engagement. ACUECommunity. https://community.acue.org/blog/having-the-time-of-my-life-the-trickle-down-model-of-self-and-student-engagement/

Saucier, D. A. (2019b). Bringing PEACE to the classroom. Faculty Focus: Effective Teaching Strategies, Philosophy of Teaching. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/bringing-peace-to-the-classroom/

Saucier, D. A., & Jones, T. L. (2020). Leading our classes through times of crisis with engagement and PEACE. Faculty Focus: Online Education, Philosophy of Teaching. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/philosophy-of-teaching/leading-our-classes-through-times-of-crisis-with-engagement-and-peace/

Saucier, D. A., Jones, T. L., Renken, N. D., & Schiffer, A. A. (in press). Professional development of faculty and graduate students in teaching. Journal on Centers for Teaching and Learning.

Saucier, D. A., Miller, S. S., Martens, A. L., & Jones, T. L. (in press). Trickle down engagement: Effects of perceived teacher and student engagement on learning outcomes. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

Saucier, D. A., Schiffer, A. A., & Jones, T. L. (under review). “Exams By You”: Having students write and complete their own exams during the COVID-19 pandemic. Teaching of Psychology.

Still, M. L., & Still, J. D. (2015). Contrasting traditional in-class exams with frequent online testing. Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology , 4(2), 30.

Timmerman, L. C., & Mulvihill, T. M. (2015). Accommodations in the college setting: The perspectives of students living with disabilities. Qualitative Report, 20 (10).

Van Der Wege, M., & Barry, L. A. (2008). Potential perils of changing environmental context on examination scores. College Teaching, 56 (3), 173-176.

Zeidner, M. (2010). Test anxiety. The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology .   https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470479216.corpsy0984

Zunhammer, M., Eberle, H., Eichhammer, P., & Busch, V. (2013). Somatic symptoms evoked by exam stress in university students: the role of alexithymia, neuroticism, anxiety and depression. PloS one, 8 (12), e84911. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0084911

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clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

This educator turned lawmaker wants to end misuse of standardized testing

The national news is full of depressing stories about repeated acts of violence in schools, expanding restrictions in Republican-led states on what teachers can say about race and gender, and staffing shortages so severe that some districts are going to four-day school weeks.

Something getting less attention but shouldn’t be is the annual springtime ritual of standardized K-12 testing. It involves millions of students who are forced to take exams to obtain scores that educators say don’t tell them anything they don’t already know. In state after state, students are undergoing hours of test preparation and then take exams that eat up time teachers say would be better spent on authentic instruction.

Annual standardized testing has been required by the federal government in most grades for decades, with the scores used for various reasons, including in many states the evaluation of teachers. Assessment experts have long said the formulas used for the evaluations aren’t valid for that purpose, but that doesn’t stop their use.

These experts have also cited other problems with the way standardized tests are used in the United States, including that teachers are purportedly intended to help teachers target specific interventions to students. The reality is that teachers aren’t allowed to see which questions students got wrong on these exams. Of course, well-designed exams can be highly useful to educators, but many of the standardized tests in use today are not particularly well crafted. One thing standardized tests have been consistent at showing over the years is the correlation between scores and whether a child lives in poverty.

Did we need NAEP to tell us students aren’t doing well?

During the coronavirus pandemic, with the education world effectively in chaos, federal officials allowed states to suspend annual testing. In 2022, testing resumed and the scores, hardly surprisingly, dropped in most places.

In January, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona acknowledged that the testing regime needs to change, saying in a speech: “We need to recognize once and for all that standardized tests work best when they serve as a flashlight on what works and what needs our attention — not as hammers to drive the outcomes we want in education from the top down, often pointing fingers to those with greater needs and less resources.”

Still, the Biden administration hasn’t moved to change the testing regime yet, and when the state of Maine recently changed the way it does annual testing, the U.S. Education Department threatened to withhold some federal funding. Meanwhile, some other states are attempting to move away from high-stakes standardized examinations and eliminating some testing mandates or replacing them with performance assessments, which requires students to show what they know through activities, projects or other open-ended tasks.

On the federal level, one member of Congress says he has had enough with standardized testing. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), the former principal of a middle school in the Bronx, is introducing legislation on Thursday that seeks to change the federal law that requires the testing to allow schools to do something more useful.

The bill is called the More Teaching Less Testing Act, which is exactly what it seeks to do — allow states more flexibility in designing and administering summative tests.

It would eliminate the requirement in the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act — which was a rewrite of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act — that annual statewide standardized tests in reading and math in grades 3 to 8, and once in high schools, as well as assessments once in each grade span in science for all students and annual English-language proficiency assessments in grades K-12 for all English learners. It would offer options for states to choose from — including grade-span testing, which limits the amount of times tests are given in each level of schooling — and representative sampling — and would reduce the amount of testing as well as cost.

Bowman, who in 2009 founded the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a Bronx public middle school that focused on a holistic curriculum, served as principal for a decade before winning an upset victory in the 2020 primary for the House seat he later won and has held since then.

Bowman said that he knows from experience that standardized tests don’t provide teachers with any information about their students they don’t already know and that the massive amount of test preparation robs students of quality learning time.

“Annual testing doesn’t happen in our most celebrated private schools,” he said, “and I think we need to ask ourselves why that is. Kids in those elite private schools are exposed to a robust comprehensive curriculum. There is no annual testing there. Why are we doing it to our poorest, most vulnerable children? No one has given me a good answer to that question.”

Bowman’s legislation has been endorsed by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, and also by the NAACP, the country’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

The slim new Republican majority in the House, however slim, means that Bowman must persuade the leadership of the House Education Committee to take up his legislation, hold hearings and put it up for a vote. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) chairs the committee. I asked the committee office whether she would consider legislation to scale back the federal standardized testing mandate. If I hear back, I’ll add the response.

Though Cardona appears to be onboard with at least the idea of changing the standardized testing mandate, it is not clear that all Democrats would be. Some of them have been enthusiastic defenders of annual standardized testing. Bowman said he thinks legislators in both parties are ready to make the changes after so many years of controversy over standardized testing. We’ll see.

What you need to know about standardized testing

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Why GCSEs should be abolished

Internal assessment by teachers worked perfectly well last year – so let’s keep that system and call it a School Certificate.

By Philip Collins

The role of education secretary has been a position in which Conservatives have often minted a reputation. Margaret Thatcher closed more grammar schools than any Labour counterpart. Keith Joseph picked up a policy left by Shirley Williams and created the GCSE. Kenneth Baker established the national curriculum. Michael Gove vastly expanded the academy schools programme. Recently, Gavin Williamson said schools and colleges might possibly, when he makes up his mind, get to give their pupils a bit of advance information on the subjects that will come up in their GCSEs.

The weeks in which Williamson does something either embarrassing or underwhelming are only bettered by the weeks in which he does nothing at all. There has been no sense, during his undistinguished tenure, of an education policy frustratingly thwarted by the pandemic. Instead, we have been forced to watch an Education Secretary selected on the irrelevant criterion of Brexit loyalty thrashing from one crisis to the next and occupying his office like a less convincing David Brent. Williamson has now announced that, to meet the disruption that Covid has visited on many, schools and colleges will help to determine the topics addressed in the examination session of summer 2022, especially in GCSE English literature, history and ancient history.

There is an actual policy staring Williamson in the face here, if he could only look. Last year the cohort of 4.5 million pupils were given GCSE grades based not on external examinations but on internal assessment. Who knows where we will be next summer after the inevitable surge in infections that comes about as a result of the government’s fatuous “freedom day” on 19 July?

The likelihood is that GCSEs next summer will be a hybrid of continuous assessment and public examination. Yet there is no need for all this confusion. Williamson could do something that would be popular with teachers and pupils alike and which would, into the bargain, be the smart course of action. He could use this crisis to abolish the GCSE for good.

The tradition of public examination for all pupils at the age of 16 derives from 1951, when the O-level replaced the old School Certificate. That began a dance which has continued ever since, between the high standard of a qualification for an academic elite and an examination sufficiently wide to encompass the whole cohort. In 1965, Tony Crosland, as the education secretary in ­Harold Wilson’s government, split the exam and introduced the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) for those not thought quite O-level standard.

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Inevitably, this felt like a separation of the sheep from the goats and when Williams became education secretary under Jim Callaghan in September 1976, she wanted to reverse the policy. It wasn’t, though, until Keith Joseph took up the office in the first Thatcher administration that the shift back happened. In 1988 all pupils were once again placed under the rubric of a single examination at 16, the new General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE).

Since then the GCSE has gradually lost most of the friends it had. According to taste you can pick your critique from among the following menu. Not enough pupils study foreign languages; there are too many soft qualifications as schools pursue places high up the league tables; too many candidates achieve the top grades; there are too many exams which last too long and exert too great a mental stress on the pupils who are sitting them; and the distinction between the GCSE and the IGCSE is a way of separating the sheep from the goats once again.

The criticisms are all true all at once. The GCSE really does only have one function, which is to act as a signalling device to help with the selection of those pupils who go on to do A-levels. We take two years out of the curriculum and force a vast amount of cramming and revision, just for this. Britain is one of the only countries in the developing world that insists on a public examination at the age of 16 and perhaps, when that was the school leaving age, it made some sense. Now that all students will remain in education or training until the age of 18 even that thin justification has disappeared. GCSE exams didn’t happen last year and the sky didn’t fall down. Internal assessment by teachers worked perfectly well – so let’s keep that system and call it a School Certificate.

Then we can stop the pointless charade of pretending that a single examination will ever stretch across a generation of pupils with such different interests and abilities. This is about more than aptitude; it is about propensity. It is destructive to some pupils to interrupt their education to brand them a failure at the age of 16. The abolition of the GCSE needs to be the first item of a new curriculum which gives students a core curriculum of maths, English and a science subject, and greater latitude to pursue their own aptitudes beyond the age of 14.

A quarter of all children, mostly from working-class families, do not register a single grade A or B at GCSE. It is all very well insisting they continue their studies up to the age of 18, but they are getting little from it, not even the maths and English they really need.

The last great Conservative revolution in education was Baker’s Great Education Reform Bill, known in the trade as Gerbil. It introduced the national curriculum, the key stages of education, devolved budgets, specialist schools and the testing regime. Williamson is famous only for having a tarantula on his desk. The abolition of the GCSE and introducing a curriculum that meets the array of talents in the country could be his Gerbil, if there is ever any suggestion that he is even remotely interested. 

[see also:  Will chaos in English schools really end with the Covid-19 bubble system? ]

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This article appears in the 14 Jul 2021 issue of the New Statesman, Apple vs Facebook

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Exams might be stressful, but they improve learning

Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology, Macquarie University

Senior Lecturer in Educational Assessment, Macquarie University

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Penny Van Bergen has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Rod Lane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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In recent weeks, students across high school and university classrooms have been breathing sighs of relief. Exams are officially over, and celebrations have begun.

For many students, exams seem a necessary evil. Time-consuming yet inevitable. But are exams really necessary? And are they evil?

In 2011, Macquarie University was the first Australian university to debate the abolition of exams . No exams in any subject, at any year level. At the time it was suggested that exams fail to develop “questioning, self sufficient learners”. Critics also often argue that exams promote a superficial understanding of topics, and that they are inauthentic : that is, they fail to represent the kinds of things students will be asked to do “in the real world”.

However, this is taking a narrow view of the benefits of exams. Exams include many of the aspects we want from assessment.

What do we want from assessment?

Good assessment programs aim to provide a balanced, fair evaluation of each student. They achieve this in two ways. First, they use of a variety of strategies and tasks. This gives students multiple opportunities, in varying contexts, to demonstrate what they know and can do . It also enables teachers to be confident in the accuracy of their judgements about each student.

Second, tasks must be “fit for purpose” . Assuming a subject has a number of goals (knowledge to learn, skills to acquire), each task should be appropriate to the specific goal or goals it is assessing. This means that a task assessing base knowledge will look different to one assessing creativity.

Rather than abolishing exams, we should instead be asking what mix of assessment tasks is most appropriate for each subject. Where might exams fit? And what are their benefits?

Exams focus on breadth

In most disciplines, there are specific bodies of knowledge that students are expected to learn. Physics students might learn about thermodynamics, while history students might learn about the cold war. Exams enable us to accurately test students’ breadth of understanding of these topics.

Critics of exams often instead promote “deep”, “rich”, and “authentic” assessment tasks. These are typically project-based tasks that draw on students’ creativity and interest. For example, history students might be asked to choose and research a historical character in depth. Business studies students might be asked to design the pitch for a new business seeking venture capital.

These tasks develop several important higher-order thinking skills, such as analysis and decision-making. However, they’re not alternatives to exams. They do different things. And this is exactly what we want: multiple, different tasks to maximise students’ opportunities to demonstrate what they know and can do.

We also want fit-for-purpose. Where breadth of knowledge is important, we want assessment tasks that target this breadth. We want our future doctors to know of the entire human body. We want our future teachers to know a full repertoire of teaching and learning approaches. Exams can help achieve this.

Exams are harder to cheat on

Exams are also useful for a very different reason: they are harder than essays to cheat on. In light of the recent “MyMaster” ghost-writing scandal , it is clear that plagiarism is a serious problem for universities.

Drawing on our characteristics of good assessment, it is impossible to provide a balanced, fair evaluation of a student’s performance if the student has paid someone else to complete their work for them.

Are we being defeatist in suggesting exams as a solution to plagiarism? Perhaps. We would like our schools and universities to be about discovery and exploration: not compliance. To date, however, essay mills have consistently remained one step ahead of academia.

While creative tasks may be one alternative solution, ghostwriter Dave Tomar writes in his book, The Shadow Scholar , that all sorts of tasks are ghost-written. More difficult tasks simply cost more. Tasks that cannot be purchased or copy-and-pasted must be integrated into the mix.

Exams do enhance learning

Finally, and on a more positive note, there is evidence that both studying for and sitting exams deepens learning.

Studying is like exercising. When one exercises, the muscles in use grow stronger. Likewise, the process of searching through ones memory and retrieving the relevant information strengthens that memory pathway for future uses. This means that when newly qualified teachers, doctors, lawyers, or accountants come to retrieve information they need, it is – as a consequence of having been practised previously – now easier to access.

So, how can we best make use of this “practice effect” for memory? Research tells us that learning is particularly strong when students self-test . Rather than passively reading and remembering by rote, we want our students to study by forming appropriate questions, searching memory for relevant responses, and knitting this information together into an appropriate answer.

We think this third benefit of exams is the most exciting. Exams don’t just provide a targeted, fit-for-purpose opportunity for students to demonstrate what they know: they also have the power to enhance what students know.

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English Essay on “Should Exams be Abolished?” English Essay-Paragraph-Speech for Class 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 CBSE Students and competitive Examination.

Should Exams be Abolished?

The word ‘examination is sufficient to send shivers down the spine of most students, Most students dread examination and would do anything to escape it.

The detractors feel that the examination system in India is obsolete and outdated. It tests only the ability of the students to ‘mug’ up and not assimilate whatever he has learnt. This, the student is expected to reproduce during exams. There is little emphasis on application of the knowledge that the student is exposed to.

For most students, exams produce unbearable stress. The fear of failure goads them on to resort to unfair means and unscrupulous ways to do well. Students cheat intimidate the invigilators or use other such means to do well. In doing all this, the entire purpose of the examination is nullified. Failure in the examination can sometimes result in drastic measures like suicide by the student who fails in the exam as well as fails to meet the expectations of teachers and parents.

Besides, a three-hour examination sets very narrow parameters to test the real worth of a student. The examinee may not perform well, owing to ill-health or some other factor, but on the result of his examination, depends his destiny. Yet, a lot of emphasis is placed on the results of various exams.

Sometimes, examination results are tampered with or question paper leak out or can be ‘bought’ in connivance with the person in charge. Under all these circumstances, the credibility of examination stands to be questioned.

The supporters of the examination system feel that exams are indispensable. They help to test objectively the preparedness of a student. They nurture his ability to work systematically. They provide an incentive to strive for excellence. Perhaps, they are the only way one can gauge the ability of a student to assimilate whatever knowledge he is exposed to. Examinations prevent the students from becoming complacent and keeps them on their toes.

However, we cannot overlook the lacunae in the present-day system of examination. Its high time, some ingenuity is introduced to make the examination system more reliable-and foolproof.

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Should traditional end-of-school exams be abolished?

Victoria and New South Wales are in a scramble to plan for end-of-school exams. Vaccination targets may not be hit in time (for students or teachers), and there are other issues too — such as kids having missed weeks of face-to-face schooling.

NSW has postponed its HSC (Higher School Certificate) exams until November. And while Victoria postponed its General Achievement Test, it has made no changes to its HSC equivalent, the VCE.

Some critics believe postponing exams isn’t enough, and are calling on states to eliminate end-of-school exams altogether.

Both states have special consideration policies put in place for scores impacted by COVID-19, but is this enough? And does this unique circumstance give us an opportunity to change the way end-of-school assessments are done?

Two schools of thought

Opinions around this year’s exams fall into two main schools of thought.

The first is that year 12 students deserve to finish what they started. We have spent 12 years convincing them of the importance of this milestone. Many students are anxious, if exams are cancelled, their pathway to university and beyond will be jeopardised by using only their prior track records. Some students are advocating keeping exams for all these reasons.

The alternate school of thought is that we’ve known for years end-of-school exams can cause debilitating stress for many young people. The extraordinary pressure of the process has tipped over the breaking point this year with so much time missed in schools.

So we should take the pressure off our kids and work with vocational education and training providers, and universities, to accommodate them.

There have always been alternative pathways to university and they have been expanding in recent years. We can use those already existing pathways which include subject-specific recruitment schemes, principal recommendations and portfolio entry.

There is already enough data in a student’s record to make an informed decision and allow admissions officers to move forward without this year’s exams. Perhaps we can even look toward eliminating them in the future with more lead time to do the calculations.

Year 12 student leaders across Sydney want the class of 2021 to be given the choice of sitting their final exams or receiving an estimate https://t.co/aJxMKntRH5 — The Sydney Morning Herald (@smh) September 7, 2021

What is the rest of the world doing?

End-of-school exams were cancelled this year due to pandemic restrictions in the United States, France, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany. Exams were modified in Denmark, Israel and Austria, while Italy held oral only exams.

The UK cancelled its A-level exams for the last two years and, in Finland, students were allowed to sit their university entrance exams multiple times.

Most Asian countries have postponed their exams. Many pundits in Western countries are advocating for a major change to the high-stakes assessment process, noting universities adjusted their entry criteria in the first year of the pandemic and coped just fine.

What are Australia’s options?

Australian educational leaders and policy makers have three distinct options:

1. Keep the system we have and continue to improve it

The first option – supported by most education ministers and regulators in states and territories – is that our exams and curriculum are built on a high degree of excellence and rigour. They have been honed by years of experience and completed by millions of students.

Continuing to improve the assessments and the curriculum that feeds them will ensure high standards and credibility for excellence rather than promoting a “lowering of the bar”. Over time, we can evolve new courses and assessments, incorporating more technology-based assessments as they are tested and validated for the high-volume administrations of state exams.

2. Add a learner profile to the current system

A second option – that of “learning profiles” – is based on the idea we need to expand the skills we value in young people, beyond those in traditional academic subjects. Skills of the future include critical thinking, problem-solving and collaboration.

Digital platforms are being developed to house evidence of student engagement in the community and to store non-traditional forms of learning (including video and other media) in online tools, creating a learner profile to represent these authentic learning experiences. NSW says it will be trialling this next year, creating an “education passport” for students.

3. Transform the system with new designs for schooling and assessment

The Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta is transforming the use of student progress data over the school years. Think of the dashboard of a car that has multiple dials and indicators and imagine using that same approach to aggregate data about students and their learning journeys.

These tools can reliably forecast student performance, allowing us to adjust our interventions to promote student success. With the use of predictive analytics, rather than waiting for end-of-school exam results, we can help students boost their future trajectories through immediate support and interventions.

The Paramatta Education Diocese is in the early days of re-designing its schools to promote personal pathways and allow students to align their passions to their emerging skillsets.

Stemming from a concept of “leaving to learn” Big Picture Learning Australia — a not-for-profit company transforming traditional education – features internships centred around the passions of students as the core of the secondary experience. Teachers run advisories that allow for transdisciplinary learning in lieu of traditional classes, all mapped to the syllabuses of the key curriculum learning areas.

Around 40+ schools across the country are in partnership with this model. Students develop portfolios of their learning to document their journeys, organising their projects and assignments to critical learning outcomes which are assessed in a cloud-based learner credential. Nearly 20 Australian universities already accept these portfolios and the credentual for admission in lieu of end-of-school exams.

John Fischetti, Professor, Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Human and Social Futures, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

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Call to ban all school exams for under-16s

All national exams should be abolished for children under 16 because the stress caused by over-testing is poisoning attitudes towards education, according to an influential teaching body.

In a remarkable attack on the government's policy of rolling national testing of children from the age of seven, the General Teaching Council is calling for a 'fundamental and urgent review of the testing regime'. In a report it says exams are failing to improve standards, leaving pupils demotivated and stressed and encouraging bored teenagers to drop out of school.

The attack comes in a study submitted to the House of Commons education select committee and passed to The Observer. The council says that schoolchildren in England are now the most tested in the world, facing an average of 70 tests and exams before the age of 16. Standard Assessment Tests, or Sats , currently taken by children at the ages of seven, 11 and 14, should be abolished, it concludes.

It says: 'The GTC continues to be convinced that the existing assessment regime needs to be changed.'

The submission, which has emerged as more than a million teenagers sit their GCSEs and A-levels, says teachers are being forced to 'drill' pupils to pass tests instead of giving a broad education.

Some are under such pressure from trying to keep schools at the top of league tables that they have gone further and fiddled results or helped children to cheat, according to Keith Bartley, chief executive of the council, the independent regulatory body set up by the government in 2000.

Yesterday, it emerged that Vanessa Rann, a 26-year-old teacher found hanged in her home, was being investigated for allegedly helping students to cheat in a GCSE exam.

'The pressure is on and it is growing,' Bartley, whose role includes advising ministers on education policy, said in an interview with The Observer. 'What we are saying to the government is that we do not think their policies are best serving the young people in this country or their achievement.

'The range of knowledge and skills that tests assess is very narrow and to prepare young people for the world they need a set of skills that are far broader.' Exams as they stood, he said, were 'missing the point'.

Bartley argued there was no need to have one day each year when the 'nation's 11 year olds were in a state of panic'. Instead, he called for a 'sampling' system under which less than 1 per cent of primary schoolchildren and less than 3 per cent of secondary students would take national tests. The move would in effect mean the end of school league tables, which are based on national test results. 'You do not have to test every child every four years to know whether children are making more or less progress than they used to,' he said.

To tell parents how individual children were doing, teachers would also be able to access a 'bank of tests' that they could use whenever they chose to make their own assessment on performance. The new system would bring England in line with Wales.

It is a shift that teachers, educationalists and parents are increasingly arguing for. Earlier this year Ken Boston, chief executive of the Curriculum and Qualifications Authority, called for the system to be overhauled because it was distorting what was being taught.

Psychologists have reported going into schools at unprecedented rates to tackle exam stress, with children as young as six suffering from anxiety.

Yet the government has so far refused to move. 'We are firmly committed to national testing and performance tables,' a spokeswoman for the Department for Education and Skills said.

'These accountability measures are essential to maintaining and extending the improvement in standards we have already achieved,' she said. 'Parents need and greatly value the information they get from tables. Transparency and accountability are not negotiable.'

Randomly selecting a sample of pupils as Bartley suggested would not 'be practical or effective', she said. The department last week announced the start of a pilot scheme that will see pupils take shorter tests more frequently when they are ready for them. The idea is to measure progress better and personalise education. But critics say it will simply increase the burden on children.

But the government has supporters. On a poll running on the Parent Organisation website, 59.4 per cent of parents say their children do not react badly to exam pressure.

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Those Who Preach Free Speech Need to Practice It

Too many leaders, on campus and in government, are failing to uphold the First Amendment rights they claim to champion.

Updated at 9:35 a.m. ET on April 30, 2024

Say you’re a college senior, just a few weeks from graduation. For as long as you can remember—even back in high school, before you set foot on campus—older people have talked about free speech. More specifically, older people have talked about free speech and you : whether your generation understands it, whether you believe in it, whether you can handle it.

After watching some of those same people order crackdowns on campus protests over the past few days, you might have a few questions for them.

Last week, from New York to Texas, cops stormed college campuses clad in riot gear. They weren’t there to confront active shooters, thank goodness, or answer bomb threats. Instead, they were there to conduct mass arrests of students protesting the war in Gaza.

As the legal director of a First Amendment advocacy nonprofit, I teach students across the country that the government can’t silence speakers because of their beliefs, even—and perhaps especially—if those beliefs are unpopular or cause offense. That’s a foundational principle of free-speech law. But many of the crackdowns appear to be a direct reaction to the protesters’ views about Israel.

After sending a phalanx of state law-enforcement officers into the University of Texas at Austin campus, for example, Governor Greg Abbott announced on X that students “joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.”

Erwin Chemerinsky: No one has a right to protest in my home

But no First Amendment exception exists for “hate-filled” speech. And for good reason: In our pluralistic democracy, everyone has their own subjective idea of what, if any, speech is too “hateful” to hear, making an objective definition impossible. And empowering the government to draw that line will inevitably silence dissent.

At UT, the officers arrested scores of protesters for “ trespassing .” But the students don’t appear to have violated school rules. And you can’t trespass on a place where you have the right to be, as students at the public universities they attend clearly do. Even a cameraman for a local news station was tackled and arrested . The next day, the Travis County attorney’s office dropped all of the trespassing charges for lack of probable cause—a telling indicator of the disturbingly authoritarian response. (Shockingly, the cameraman does face a felony charge , for allegedly assaulting a police officer—an allegation difficult to square with video of his arrest.) The government can’t throw Americans in jail for exercising their First Amendment right to peaceful protest.

Governor Abbott’s illiberal show of force has no place in a free country. It’s especially galling given the governor’s previous posture as a stalwart defender of campus free speech: In June 2019, he signed a law prohibiting Texas’s public colleges and universities from shutting down campus speakers because of their ideology. So much for that.

Governor Abbott isn’t alone. During her congressional testimony earlier this month, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik pledged investigations of students and faculty who voiced allegedly anti-Semitic criticism of Israel and Zionism, and agreed—on the fly—to remove a professor from his position as a committee chair because of his speech.

Michael Powell: The unreality of Columbia’s ‘liberated zone’

Columbia is a private institution, so it isn’t bound by the First Amendment. But the university promises freedom of expression to its students and faculty—and Shafik’s willingness to sacrifice faculty and student rights to appease hostile members of Congress betrays those promises.

If such things had happened only at UT and Columbia, that would be bad enough—but the problem is spreading. At Emory University, in Atlanta, police officers reportedly used tear gas and Tasers against protesters. State troopers with rifles directed toward protesters stood watch on a rooftop at Ohio State University. At Indiana University, administrators rushed out a last-minute, overnight policy change to justify a similar show of force from law enforcement, resulting in 34 arrests. It’s hard to keep up.

Students nationwide are watching how the adults who professed to care about free speech are responding under pressure. And they are learning that those adults don’t really mean what they say about the First Amendment. That’s a dangerous lesson. Our schools and universities could still teach the country a better one.

“Free Speech 101” starts here: The First Amendment protects an enormous amount of speech, including speech that some, many, perhaps most Americans would find deeply offensive. You may not like pro-Palestine speech; you may not like pro-Israel speech. You may think some of it veers into bigotry. The answer is to ignore it, mock it, debate it, even counterprotest it. But don’t call in the SWAT team.

George Packer: The campus-left occupation that broke higher education

Granted, free speech is not without carefully designated exceptions, and these exceptions are important but narrow. True threats and intimidation, properly defined, are not protected by the First Amendment. Neither is discriminatory harassment. Violence is never protected.

And public universities can maintain reasonable “time, place, and manner” restrictions on speech. That means, for example, that for the authorities to place a ban on playing heavily amplified sound right outside the dorms at 2 a.m. likely does not violate the First Amendment. A prohibition on camping overnight in the quad probably doesn’t either. And taking over a campus building, as Columbia students did early this morning , is not protected.

But the enforcement of these rules must be evenhanded and proportionate. The use of force should be a last resort. Students must be given clear notice about what conduct crosses a line. And any student facing punishment for an alleged infringement should receive a fair hearing. Consistency counts. Our leaders—in government, in university administration—must demonstrate their commitment to free expression in both word and deed.

Students are protesting on campuses nationwide, and they’re watching the reaction of university presidents and elected officials closely. The current moment presents a generational challenge: Do older people and people in authority really mean what they say about the First Amendment? Do they believe in free speech—and can they handle it? Right now, too many leaders are failing the test.

Columbia Law Review student editors urge school to cancel exams after protests leave them ‘irrevocably shaken’

S tudent editors at the Columbia Law Review are urging the school to cancel final exams after anti-Israel protests and New York Police Department arrests have left the campus fractured. 

Columbia University has been at the forefront of the nationwide campus pro-Palestinian protests. The editors are asking the law school to cancel final exams and effectively give all students passing grades for the semester of work.

“In the alternative, it is our view that the Law School at the very least observes the community’s overwhelming call for mandatory Pass/Fail during this horrific time for our campus,” the letter said. 

The letter said canceling final exams would be a “proportionate” response to the “level of distress our peers have been feeling."

"The violence we witnessed last night has irrevocably shaken many of us on the Review. We know thi to be the same for many of our classmates. Videos have circulated of police clad in riot gear mocking and brutalizing our students. The events of last night left us, and many of our peers, unable to focus and highly emotion during this tumultuous time," the statement read.

The letter was co-signed by five other law journals at the school: the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, Columbia Journal of Race and Law, Columbia Journal of European Law, Columbia Human Rights Law Review & a Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual, and Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems.

Only one library on campus remains open with limited hours during exam season. Final exams begin Friday and run through May 10. Commencement is scheduled for May 15 and is still expected to take place.

Tuesday, some protesters broke into Hamilton Hall, an administrative building, by breaking windows and barricaded themselves inside. More than 100 arrests were made and the encampments at Columbia were effectively cleared out by Wednesday.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik released a statement acknowledging the hardships the Columbia community has faced in recent weeks. 

“I know I speak for many members of our community in saying that this turn of events has filled me with deep sadness. I am sorry we reached this point,” a statement from Shafik said following the NYPD on campus. 

“It is going to take time to heal, but I know we can do that together. I hope that we can use the weeks ahead to restore calm, allow students to complete their academic work, and honor their achievements at Commencement,” the statement continued.

The statement said many students will not be able to perform to their best ability this exam season due to events that have taken place on campus.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"The current exam policy raises concerns around equity and academic integrity. Many are unwell at this time and cannot study or concentrate while their peers are being hauled to jail," the law journal’s letter read.

Columbia Law School did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment on if it was considering canceling final exams.

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What the First Amendment Means for Campus Protests

Encampments? Occupying buildings? Demonstrators cite their right to free expression, but the issues are thorny.

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By Alan Blinder

Follow our live coverage of the college protests at U.C.L.A. and other universities.

Protesters on college campuses have often cited the First Amendment as shelter for their tactics, whether they were simply waving signs or taking more dramatic steps, like setting up encampments, occupying buildings or chanting slogans that critics say are antisemitic.

But many legal scholars, along with university lawyers and administrators, believe at least some of those free-speech assertions muddle, misstate, test or even flout the amendment, which is meant to guard against state suppression.

Whose interpretation and principles prevail, whether in the courts or among the administrators in charge of meting out discipline, will do much to determine whether protesters face punishments for campus turmoil.

The First Amendment doesn’t automatically apply at private schools.

Public universities, as arms of government, must yield to the First Amendment and how the courts interpret its decree that there shall be no law “abridging the freedom of speech” or “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”

But private universities set their own standards around speech and protest.

To be sure, private universities tend to embrace free expression more than, say, private businesses. Those policies and approaches, though, are driven by principles like academic freedom and the marketplace of ideas, not constitutional law.

Columbia University, a hub through this round of campus protests and the scene of an enormous police response on Tuesday night, has not forbidden all speech. But its current policy includes a set of rules, such as permissible demonstration zones and preregistration of protests, that the university says are intended to ensure safety while promising that “all members of the university community have the right to speak, study, research, teach and express their own views.”

Legal scholars have said that while the university’s approach may anger students and faculty members, and may even curtail speech on campus, Columbia faces far less legal risk than any public school might.

‘Time, place and manner’ is a crucial standard.

Academic administrators and the courts alike often find comfort in frameworks, and the notion of “time, place and manner” is deeply embedded in case law involving free speech.

Under that doctrine, governments may sometimes regulate logistical details associated with speech. The doctrine is not a blank check for state power over speech — a government must, for example, apply regulations without discriminating against a viewpoint — but it allows for some restrictions in the pursuit of public safety and order.

For university leaders, the doctrine offers a template of sorts for protest policies that can survive legal scrutiny and withstand political backlashes.

“We always thought that time, place, manner — if applied in a fair, open and completely neutral way — was the best mechanism to both allow protest and also to ensure that protest didn’t disrupt academic programming and activities,” said Nicholas B. Dirks, a former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, which has one of the richest traditions of protest in higher education.

But, Dr. Dirks added, “That’s easier said than done.”

Another important test is ‘imminent lawless action.’

The Supreme Court, soon after World War I, delivered a First Amendment ruling that included the phrase “clear and present danger.” About 50 years later, the court adopted an approach focused on “imminent lawless action.”

That test is important in gauging whether, for example, the First Amendment protects an antisemitic chant. If the rhetoric is intended to provoke an “imminent lawless action” and is likely to do so, it is not considered constitutionally sound. But a chant that fails any part of that standard is protected, meaning that even some grotesquely uncomfortable, distasteful speech may not be subject to discipline by the government.

“The tricky part is when the conduct and the speech are close to the line,” said Timothy J. Heaphy, who was a United States attorney during the Obama administration and later the university counsel at the University of Virginia.

Some threatening behavior on campuses is illegal under federal civil rights law. Two men, for instance, pleaded guilty to using a threat of force to intimidate Black students and employees at the University of Mississippi after they placed a noose around a campus statue of James Meredith, the first Black student to enroll there, in 2014. One of the men was sentenced to prison.

Are encampments covered by the First Amendment?

Although some campus protesters consider their encampments to be a form of speech, the courts have held that restrictions on overnight camping and the like can meet the time, place and manner test, even on public property.

In a 7-2 ruling in 1984, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that the National Park Service could refuse a request for protesters to spend nights in “symbolic tents” near the White House under its regulations against sleeping in places that were not classified as campgrounds.

“The regulation forbidding sleeping meets the requirements for a reasonable time, place, or manner restriction of expression,” Justice Byron White wrote in his opinion.

“The regulation is neutral with regard to the message presented, and leaves open ample alternative methods of communicating the intended message concerning the plight of the homeless,” he added.

A court would never see a building occupation like the one this week at Columbia, Mr. Heaphy predicted, as a protected First Amendment activity.

“Students occupied the building,” he said. “That’s conduct. That’s not going to last.”

Can universities change policies?

Generally, yes, but, for public universities, the First Amendment still applies.

Again, private universities have more discretion.

At the University of Chicago, the president, Paul Alivisatos, noted this week that while encampments violate school rules, administrators “may allow an encampment to remain for a short time despite the obvious violations of policy.”

Floating that possibility, he cited “the importance of the expressive rights of our students” and said that “the impact of a modest encampment does not differ so much from a conventional rally or march.”

But he signaled the university would not allow its policy to be eviscerated, and he urged students involved with the encampment “to instead embrace the multitude of other tools at their disposal.”

Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education. More about Alan Blinder

Our Coverage of the U.S. Campus Protests

News and Analysis

G.W.U. : Hours before the mayor of Washington, D.C., was scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill about the city’s handling of a pro-Palestinian encampment at George Washington University, police moved to break up the encampment .

U.C.L.A. : A police consulting firm will review a violent confrontation  at the University of California, Los Angeles, in which a group of counterprotesters attacked demonstrators  at a pro-Palestinian encampment while security guards and police officers failed to intervene.

UChicago : Police officers removed the pro-Palestinian encampment  at the University of Chicago, a move that was sure to be closely watched because the school has long considered itself a model for free expression on campus .

Remembering the 1968 Protests:  As Chicago prepares to host the Democratic National Convention , it wants to shed memories of chaos from half a century ago even as the campus protests are growing.

Protests in Europe:  In countries across Europe, students have staged their own pro-Palestinian sit-ins and protests  on the lawns of their universities. And in several instances, the authorities are taking a similar approach to their U.S. counterparts: shutting them down.

Outside Agitators:  Officials in New York City have blamed “external actors” for escalating demonstrations at Columbia, but student protesters reject the claim .

A Spotlight on Student Journalists:  Columbia’s radio station and other student-led news outlets have provided some of the most detailed coverage  of the turmoil engulfing campuses.

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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks about the implementation of Florida's abortion ban May 1, 2024, in Jacksonville, Fla. (AP)

Did Trump say states have the right to monitor, punish women over abortion, as Kamala Harris said?

If your time is short.

Former President Donald Trump’s comments to a Time magazine reporter allowed for the possibility of states monitoring and punishing women for getting illegal abortions, but he wasn’t as explicit about whether he thought they should. Trump told the reporter that the reporter would need to ask the states "because the states are going to say." 

On the same day Florida’s six-week abortion ban took effect, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Jacksonville to blast the law and blame one person: Florida resident and former President Donald Trump.

Harris said the Florida ban prohibits abortions before most women know they are pregnant . Then she singled out Trump, citing recent remarks in Time magazine about his stance on policies including reproductive health.

"Just this week in an interview, (Trump) said states have the right to monitor pregnant women to enforce these bans and states have the right to punish pregnant women for seeking out abortion care," Harris told campaign supporters.

Her phrasing could make it sound as though Trump spoke in support of the states taking those actions. Rather, he acknowledged that states have the right to do this but would not share his opinion on whether they should.

On April 30, Time published the transcripts of two interviews with Trump with the online rollout of its cover story about his vision for a second term in office. Reporter Eric Cortellessa interviewed Trump twice in April, once at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s West Palm Beach estate, and once by phone.

Cortellessa pressed Trump for details about his somewhat murky abortion position, including whether he would veto federal abortion restrictions or a bill that grants full legal rights to embryos. Trump’s answers consistently deferred to the states. (Trump also wouldn’t say how he planned to vote on Florida’s ballot amendment that would allow abortions to the point of fetal viability.)

Then, Cortellessa asked, "Do you think states should monitor women's pregnancies so they can know if they've gotten an abortion after the ban?"

Trump replied, "I think they might do that. Again, you'll have to speak to the individual states." 

As Trump began talking about Roe v. Wade, the legal precedent that allowed federal abortion access until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it in 2022, Cortellessa jumped in, mentioning states prosecuting women who received illegal abortions and asking Trump if he was comfortable with that. Trump said his comfort was irrelevant. Here’s the transcript:

Cortellessa : "States will decide if they're comfortable or not — " 

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Trump : "Yeah the states — "

Cortellessa : "Prosecuting women for getting abortions after the ban. But are you comfortable with it?" 

Trump : "The states are going to say. It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It's totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions. And by the way, Texas is going to be different than Ohio. And Ohio is going to be different than Michigan. I see what's happening."

Cortellessa gave Trump’s abortion comments prominence within the Time story, characterizing them by saying Trump "would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans." He later wrote that Trump said policies such as monitoring women’s pregnancies and prosecuting them for illegal abortions should be left to the individual states.

Brian Fallon, a communications director for the Biden-Harris campaign, told PolitiFact that Trump’s answers may have avoided a direct call for states to monitor pregnant women, but "clearly means he thinks individual states are within their rights to do so."

Likewise, Fallon said, on punishing women, Trump’s deferment to states "means he believes it is in their power to make the decision to punish women if they wish."

In recent legislative sessions, lawmakers in states such as Texas , Kentucky , Louisiana , Kansas and South Carolina have offered bills that could potentially allow the prosecution of women who undergo abortions. None has advanced far; Republican leaders have often come out against them as too extreme. PolitiFact was unable to find any bills introduced so far that would require monitoring of pregnancies to prevent abortions.

President Joe Biden and Harris have long said that Trump supports punishing women for getting abortions, a claim we previously rated Mostly False . In a 2016 MSNBC town hall, host Chris Matthews asked about penalties for abortion, and Trump said there has to be "some form of punishment" for women. But Trump retracted the comment that same day, amid criticism, and issued a statement that said he meant that physicians should be held legally responsible, not women.

Harris said that "just this week in an interview, (Trump) said states have the right to monitor pregnant women to enforce these bans, and states have the right to punish pregnant women for seeking out abortion care."

Trump’s comments allowed for that possibility, though he wasn’t that explicit about whether he thought they should. Trump told a Time reporter that the reporter would need to ask the states "because the states are going to say." 

Harris’ statement is accurate but needs clarification. We rate it Mostly True.

RELATED: Donald Trump said all legal scholars, ‘on both sides,’ wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. That’s wrong.

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Vice President Kamala Harris speech , May 1, 2024

President Joe Biden X post, May 1, 2024 

Time magazine, How Far Trump Would Go , April 30, 2024 

Time magazine, Read the Full Transcripts of Donald Trump’s Interviews With TIME , April 30, 2024 

Time magazine, Fact-Checking What Donald Trump Said in His 2024 Interviews With TIME , April 30, 2024 

PolitiFact, Biden in Tampa: Fact-checks of his claims on abortion, Trump , April 23, 2024 

PolitiFact, Does Trump support punishments for women who get abortions? Biden ad uses old, retracted remark , Sept. 19, 2023 

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Campus protests over the Gaza war

House passes bill aimed to combat antisemitism amid college unrest.

Barbara Sprunt

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson visited Columbia University on April 24 to meet with Jewish students and make remarks about concerns that the ongoing demonstrations have become antisemitic. Alex Kent/Getty Images hide caption

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson visited Columbia University on April 24 to meet with Jewish students and make remarks about concerns that the ongoing demonstrations have become antisemitic.

The House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday aimed at addressing reports of rising antisemitism on college campuses, where activists angered by Israel's war against Hamas have been protesting for months and more recently set up encampments on campus grounds .

The Antisemitism Awareness Act would see the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism for the enforcement of federal anti-discrimination laws regarding education programs.

The bill passed with a 320-91 vote. Seventy Democrats and 21 Republicans voted against the measure.

The international group defines antisemitism as "a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews" and gives examples of the definition's application, which includes "accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagine wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group" and making " dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective."

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., introduced the legislation.

"Right now, without a clear definition of antisemitism, the Department of Education and college administrators are having trouble discerning whether conduct is antisemitic or not, whether the activity we're seeing crosses the line into antisemitic harassment," he said on the House floor before passage.

The bill goes further than an executive order former President Donald Trump signed in 2019 . Opponents argue the measure could restrict free speech.

"This definition adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance includes 'contemporary examples of antisemitism'," said Rep. Jerry Nadler in a speech on the House floor ahead of the vote. "The problem is that these examples may include protected speech in some context, particularly with respect to criticism of the state of Israel."

Fellow New York Democrat Rep. Ritchie Torres , one of the 15 Democratic cosponsors of the bill, told NPR he finds that argument unconvincing.

"There's a false narrative that the definition censors criticism of the Israeli government. I consider it complete nonsense," Torres said in an interview with NPR.

"If you can figure out how to critique the policies and practices of the Israeli government without calling for the destruction of Israel itself, then no reasonable person would ever accuse you of antisemitism," he added.

Issue should 'transcend partisan politics'

While members of both parties have criticized reports of antisemitism at the protests, Republicans have made the issue a central political focus.

House Speaker Mike Johnson made a rare visit last week to Columbia University, where demonstrators were demanding the school divest from companies that operate in Israel. Johnson and a handful of GOP lawmakers met with a group of Jewish students.

"They are really concerned that their voices are not being heard when they may complain about being assaulted, being spit on, being told that all Jews should die — and they are not getting any response from the individuals who are literally being paid to protect them," Rep. Anthony D'Esposito, R-N.Y., told NPR of the meeting.

On Tuesday, Johnson held a press conference focused on antisemitism with a group of House Republicans at the U.S. Capitol.

"Antisemitism is a virus and it will spread if it's not stamped out," Johnson said. "We have to act, and House Republicans will speak to this fateful moment with moral clarity."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who chairs the House progressive caucus, says Republicans are playing politics.

"Many of these Republicans didn't say a word when Trump and others in Charlottesville and other places were saying truly antisemitic things. But all of a sudden now they want to bring forward bills that divide Democrats and weaponize this," she said.

Torres said he wished Johnson had done a bipartisan event with House Democrats to "present a united front."

"You know, it's impossible to take the politics out of politics, but the fight against all forms of hate, including antisemitism, should transcend partisan politics," he said.

Student protestors chant near an entrance to Columbia University on April 30. Columbia University has restricted access to the school's campus to students residing in residential buildings on campus and employees who provide essential services to campus buildings after protestors took over Hamilton Hall overnight. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images hide caption

Student protestors chant near an entrance to Columbia University on April 30. Columbia University has restricted access to the school's campus to students residing in residential buildings on campus and employees who provide essential services to campus buildings after protestors took over Hamilton Hall overnight.

Jewish students speak about feeling harassed

Hear from students who met with speaker johnson.

There was increased urgency to move legislation to the floor after lawmakers started hearing stories of Jewish students feeling unwelcome on campuses.

Eliana Goldin, a junior at Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary, said the escalation of protests on and around her campus have made her feel unsafe.

"I know many, many people who have been harassed because they wear a Jewish star necklace," Goldin told NPR. Goldin was one student who received a message from Rabbi Elie Buechler of Columbia a week ago.

"The events of the last few days...have made it clear that Columbia University's Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students' safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy," the message read. "It deeply pains me to say that I would strongly recommend you return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved."

Demonstrators say their protest is peaceful and that some of the antisemitic events that have garnered national attention have come from people outside of the university.

Goldin said she was part of an interaction that got a lot of online attention of someone yelling at her and others to "go back to Poland." She said she was disappointed in the reaction from the broader Columbia community, even though the person was likely not a student.

"I do think if someone were to say, 'go back to Africa' to a Black student, it would one, be abhorrent," Goldin said. "And correctly, the entire Columbia student body would feel outraged at that, and we would all be able to rally around it. But of course, when someone says 'go back to Poland' to a Jew, we don't feel the same outrage and the same unity against that."

Torres said lawmakers should listen to students like Goldin.

"If there are Black students, who claim to experience racism, we rightly respect their experiences. The same would be true of Latino students, the same would be true of Asian students," he said. "If there are Jewish students who are telling us that they do not feel safe, why are we questioning the validity of their experiences? Why are we not affording them the sensitivity that we would have for every other group?"

Columbia University did not respond to NPR about questions about their handling of the protests.

A demonstrator breaks the windows of the front door of the building in order to secure a chain around it to prevent authorities from entering as demonstrators from the pro-Palestine encampment barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, an academic building at Columbia University, on April 30. Alex Kent/Getty Images hide caption

A demonstrator breaks the windows of the front door of the building in order to secure a chain around it to prevent authorities from entering as demonstrators from the pro-Palestine encampment barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall, an academic building at Columbia University, on April 30.

'It just really kind of erodes the soul'

Xavier Westergaard, a Ph.D. student at Columbia, attended the meeting between the House GOP delegation and Jewish students.

"The mood in the room was relief that someone so high up in the government made this a priority," he said, referring to Johnson.

"Jewish students, including myself, have been the victims of physical violence and intimidation. This goes from shoving, spitting, being told to go back to Europe," he said. "It just really kind of erodes the soul if you hear it too many times."

He added: "And this is not just happening outside the gates, on the sidewalk where anyone from anywhere can come and demonstrate. We do have the First Amendment in this country. This was actually on campus. The university has responsibilities to protect their students from harassment on the basis of religion or creed or national origin."

A consistent refrain among protesters is that criticizing the policies of the Israeli government doesn't equate to antisemitism.

Westergaard agrees, but says that's not what he's experiencing.

"I've heard, 'We want all Zionists off campus.' I've heard 'death to the Zionist state, death to Zionists.' And as a Jew, I feel that Zionism and Judaism can be teased apart with a tremendous amount of care and compassion and knowledge," he said. "But it's also just a dog whistle that people use when they're talking about the Jews."

Juliana Castillo, an undergraduate, was also at the meeting with Johnson. She said calls for the safety of students doesn't just include physical well-being.

"There are things like intimidation, like feeling uncomfortable being openly Jewish or taking a direct route across campus," she said. "It doesn't always manifest as a lack of physical safety. Sometimes it manifests as being unwelcome in a class or feeling like people's viewpoints or perspectives are not respected."

She said even isolated incidents of antisemitism that get circulated widely online have a "creeping impact on people."

"Just knowing that something has happened to your friends, or to people you know in a place you're familiar with, makes it difficult to have a sense that this is your campus," she said. "These things do build up."

Bipartisan push on more bills to counter antisemitism

Lawmakers say this bill is just one step — and that there's more action the chamber should take to combat antisemitism.

Torres and Lawler have introduced another bill that would place a monitor on a campus to report back to the federal government on whether the university is complying with Title VI , which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in places like colleges that receive federal funding.

"A law is only as effective as its enforcement, and the purpose here is to provide an enforcement mechanism where none exist," Torres said. "And I want to be clear: the legislation would empower the federal Department of Education not to impose a monitor on every college or university, only when there's reason to suspect a violation of Title VI."

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is urging Johnson to bring the bipartisan Countering Antisemitism Act to the floor.

"The effort to crush antisemitism and hatred in any form is not a Democratic or Republican issue" said Jeffries in a statement.

Letter to Speaker Mike Johnson on the Bipartisan Countering Antisemitism Act. pic.twitter.com/z3weUD54zm — Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) April 29, 2024

The bill would establish a senior official in the Department of Education to monitor for antisemitism on college campuses and create a national coordinator in the White House to oversee a new interagency task force to counter antisemitism.

"We have negotiated that bill for nine months. It is bipartisan. It's bicameral," said North Carolina Democrat Kathy Manning, who co-chairs the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism.

Manning was part of a trio of House Democrats who visited Columbia University last week to hear from Jewish students.

Manning points to a study from the American Jewish Committee that found that 46% of American Jews since October 7 say they have altered their behavior out of fear of antisemitism .

"I find that deeply disturbing, that in the United States of America, people are now afraid to be recognized in public as being Jewish," Manning said.