ABSTRACT
Writing in a Washington Post column titled “Trying to Clear up the Confusion” (Mathews, 2001), Jay Mathews confessed that “what confuses me the most” is “How is it that these tests [the state and district mandated tests] are forcing so many good teachers to abandon methods they know work for their kids?” In writing and reading instruction, there are two reasons for the kindergarten through twelfth grade problem that troubles Mathews-one reason being the impact of state and district tests on public understanding and support of the schools and the other reason being the direct impact of these tests on subject matter goals. State and district mandated tests have two quite different and sometimes contradictory purposes-one contributing to social capital (public understanding) and the other contributing to human capital (student learning). State and district tests tend to emphasize the social capital goals of efficient reporting methods for the public and to ignore the human capital goals of academic learning in the classroom. In fact, some subjects require instructional methods that run counter to the methods imposed by many state-and district-mandated tests. Therefore, to achieve student success on some tests, teachers must abandon the methods they know are necessary in some subjects. This chapter argues that Internet-connected, computer-mediated instruction and assessment (Automated Essay Scoring) can make a substantial contribution to overcoming both the social capital problem of public understanding and the human capital problem of subject matter knowledge and instructional method.
