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by Joshua A. Taton, Ph.D. | August 7, 2023 | 2 min read

He's one of today's most-recognizable writers and public speakers. She's a financial guru, worth billions. Both were labeled "low ability" in school. 

Colin Jost's memoir, A Very Punchable Face, would be fully hilarious if it weren't also very sad. In it, the "Saturday Night Live" star, comedian, and Harvard alum describes speech difficulties that hampered his success in elementary school, as well as his receiving low verbal SAT scores.

Not dissimilarly, Barbara Corcoran often speaks about her own struggles in school. The billionaire investor, and star of "Shark Tank," explains that she was regularly labeled "the dumb kid" and received grades of "straight D's" throughout high school. One of her challenges was undiagnosed and untreated dyslexia.

How could this happen?

Sadly, it's not uncommon. There is a persistent myth that tests and test scores (and grades) are somehow "accurate."

But, to the contrary, all that tests are able to measure is the test-taker's "ability" to interpret and respond to the questions on that test on that given day. And yet, students are put into boxes, labeled, ranked, sorted, as if the test result is their full identity.

No test can adequately measure a taker's full spectrum of knowledge, understanding, and skill. Nor the ability to persist when facing obstacles.

And this myth is pervasive. I see it everywhere, despite all that we know about:

• Stereotype threat (that the result of standardized tests can be easily manipulated, hence can vary widely from one testing situation to another, particularly when test-takers feel they are representative of a larger group)

• Neurodivergence and neurodiversity (which, to me, includes looking at things in unexpected or atypical ways);

• Neuroplasticity (that the human brain can attain new knowledge and skill at any age);

• Growth-mindset (that the belief you can do something determines that you can); and

• The impact of negative beliefs about students on learning (that having negative or fixed-mindset beliefs about students actually lowers their academic achievement).

Recently, in fact, I attended a state-level meeting led by prominent and experienced educators with advanced credentials in the statistics of test-design. Even with advanced degrees and decades of experience in K-12 education, I lost count of the number of times I heard references to "high ability" and "low ability" students. 

At high-profile meetings, as this was, I firmly believe such references can have damaging, downstream impact on schools and in classrooms. Even if they are meant as innocent short-hand substitutions for longer and more complex phrases, we all need to develop, practice, and use a different set of terms for describing students' performance on tests.

I'd suggest a few possibilities: "students currently working at this level," "students currently meeting this threshold," etc. Admittedly, these take more time to express, but I think they are also more reflective of real complexities.

Paraphrasing a well-known quotation from Dr. Maya Angelou, now that we know more about testing and know better about the impact of false labels on students, we can (and must) do better. 

I welcome your thoughts.