During the NightScience in Paris I formuled 4 laws of testing for politicians because I noticed that the same problems on testing occure in more countries. The 4 laws are ment to give politicians insight in the way testing systems influence the educational system.

The first law of testing for politicians is shown in the graph below. It states that time on testing takes away the time on learning.

The second law of testing for politicans states that only (Lower Order Thinking Skills) LOTS can be measured 100% accurate and HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) can only be measured up to 80% accuracy. Two statements can be made from this law:

  1. LOTS are necessary and should give students a good foundation to reach HOTS
  2. Trying to measure HOTS 100% accurate drives out the magic in education and reduces HOTS to LOTS

The third law of testing states that the load of bureaucracy is related to the faith politics have in the educational system. Bureaucracy is not a bad thing in it self and unconditional faith is maybe not good either. But when the load of bureaucracy is too big it seems that there is no faith at all in the people who work in education.

The fourth law of testing for politicians states that the emphasis in testing on product outcomes or process outcomes relates to the progress in learning students make. This law indicates that teaching to the test does not encourage progress in learning by students.