Testing and Critical Thinking: A Response

In her blog, Stephanie asked about the possibility of making essays a more important element to student evaluation than just objective testing.

One of the major flaws of objective testing, as Stephanie pointed out, is that it encourages "learning for the test," cramming information for the test without retaining it afterwards. This was a trap that I never fell in to in prep school (except perhaps in my advanced mathematics class -- and honestly, not remembering how to calculate sine, cosine, and tangent is extremely unlikely to be detrimental to my education or my life in general), though I know people who did. Granted, I attended a prep school in Connecticut, so I did not have the spectre of a big standardized test like MCAS looming over my head. Nevertheless, these tests (and in a sense, perhaps even testing in general) can do more harm than good for education.

So what of requiring more essay writing, requiring a display of critical thinking? The idea, in theory, seems to be quite sound (but then, communism looks nice on paper, too). However, there are huge practical hurdles to essay writing, particularly where large exams, testing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of students, are concerned. When an exam is being administered to a large number of students, the most efficient way to score them is scantron, as the MCAS primarily is (or so I have been told). Including more essays requires a far higher allocation of resources to score, both in terms of work hours required, and the salaries of educators who would need to evaluate those essays, along with the resources that would be required to determine a fair rubric for judging the "critical thinking" displayed in an essay. Coupled with the general conservative bent of school boards and the intractability of teachers unions (not to mention our education system's poor track record of efficient use of resources), the chances of significant changes to testing are exceedingly slim.

To end with a question: What might be some practical options for encouraging the teaching of, and measuring, critical thinking skills?