A central concern surrounding test-based accountability is that teachers may narrow teaching practices to improve test performance on a curriculum-based specific knowledge test rather than student learning more broadly. Two of the most common teaching practices that “teach to the test” are providing test-specific classwork and increasing the frequency with which students take practice tests. Whether such teaching practices improve student learning—both in terms of learning the content associated with a specific knowledge test as well as more general learning—is a largely unanswered question. To approach this question, this paper uses a student fixed effects approach to analyze the impact of these kinds of narrow teaching practices on student performance on a specific test as well as a general knowledge test. We find that test-specific classwork and practice tests with specific test items tend to have little or negative impacts on curriculum specific or general knowledge test performance, except for male students, and that subject practice tests (without emphasizing test-specific items) have positive effects on student outcomes on both kinds of tests, but larger on the curriculum-specific than on the general test, and much larger on the curriculum-specific test for male students. We discuss the logic for these results and what they tell us about the effectiveness of test-focused teaching practices more generally.

围绕基于考试的责任制的中心关注点是，教师可能会缩小教学实践，以提高基于课程的特定知识考试的考试成绩，而不是更广泛地学习学生。“测试教学”最常见的两种教学实践是提供针对特定测试的课堂作业，并增加学生参加实践测试的频率。从学习与特定知识测验相关的内容以及更广泛的学习上来说，这样的教学实践是否能够改善学生的学习能力，这在很大程度上是一个尚未得到回答的问题。为了解决这个问题，本文使用学生固定效应方法来分析这些狭窄的教学实践对学生在特定测试和常识测试中的表现的影响。我们发现，针对特定考试项目的针对特定考试的课堂练习和实践考试，对课程特定或常识测试成绩的影响往往很小或具有负面影响，除了男学生，而且学科实践考试（不强调针对特定考试的项目）具有积极意义两种考试对学生成绩的影响，但对课程的影响大于对普通考试的影响，对男性学生的针对课程的影响要大得多。我们讨论了这些结果的逻辑，以及它们更全面地说明了以测试为中心的教学实践的有效性。并且科目练习测试（不强调测试项目）对两种测试对学生成绩都有积极影响，但对课程设置的影响大于对普通考试的影响，对男性学生的课程设置的影响要大得多。我们讨论了这些结果的逻辑，以及它们更全面地说明了以测试为中心的教学实践的有效性。并且科目练习测试（不强调测试项目）对两种测试对学生成绩都有积极影响，但对课程设置的影响大于对普通考试的影响，对男性学生的课程设置的影响要大得多。我们讨论了这些结果的逻辑，以及它们更全面地说明了以测试为中心的教学实践的有效性。