Article_College Without Tests, Washington Post

No Tests? College's Students Must Relearn How to LearnBy Susan Kinzie

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 25, 2006; Page B01

By the end of last year, ElizabethFleming had taken the SAT, the PSAT, four AP exams and seven IB exams.At Richard Montgomery High School, her classmates agonized over thescores they needed to get into a good college, and the entire jitterymonth of May was spent cramming for exams.
This year, she got a culture shock.

Fleming enrolled at St. John's College, a tiny liberal arts schoolin Annapolis where scores are irrelevant: no exams to speak of, and nogrades unless students request them.
She went from one extreme toanother. In a country where "benchmarking" and "high-stakes testing"continue to be buzzwords, many Washington area high schools stand outfor their competitiveness, their emphasis on testing and the stressstudents feel to get good numbers. "It escalates every year,"independent college counselor Shirley Bloomquist said.
College isa change for most students, a shift from memorization to analysis, fromweekly did-you-do-the-homework quizzes to weighty final papers. "Inthis era of No Child Left Behind, these students that will be coming tocollege are tested within an inch of their lives so regularly and sointensely," said John Bader, associate dean for academic programs andadvising at Johns Hopkins University, who is co-writing a book onadmissions and success.
Some college departments, such aspolitical science, do not give college credit for AP scores, becausethe tests are mostly multiple choice. In many college courses, Badersaid, "Most of what you learn is that there is no clear answer. Thereis no right or wrong. Yet when you test all the time, you're of coursesuggesting there is."
For freshmen such as Fleming who arewhipsawed from pressure-cooker, high-achieving high schools to collegesthat take a longer-term, more philosophical view of learning, the firstsemester is an education in itself.
Almost all have to learn anew way of learning. Without scores, they have to decide: Can theyprogress without measurement? Or is it possible to measure the thingsthat really matter?

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