Why do (some) students cheat on tests? Because they want the test to show better results. Because poor test results will put them in a worse state than good test results. Because they don't want to be judged by poor test results. Because thy don't want to be damned by poor test results. The test is an enemy to be conquered or avoided... Now that's useful.
In the Internet age where it's very easy to create a poll, university professors and judges find themselves being evaluated by students and lawyers respectively. They hate it, and fight it with all the eloquence you would expect from those who make a living by talking and writing. But beneath the learned reasoning for not subjecting themselves to evaluation, what is the problem? Same as with the cheating students: They don't want to be judged and damned. They also don't want to be in the inferior position of reporting to anybody, though if they were guaranteed a glowing report, they may not mind too much.
A similar state of affairs exists wherever a guild manages to keep the power to define the mechanisms that govern it, but this post is concerned only with K12 students. Fixing the rest of the world will have to wait a few weeks.
The students are right: Regular exams at school are designed to judge them. The teacher grading the test may scrawl a few words of reprimand on the wrong answer, but the test as served its purpose as soon as a mark is assigned. Seldom will there be a follow up with a specific student on a specific error. Usually, no one expects to learn from a test. Testing is not part of the learning process. It's an overhead and, may I humbly suggest, a distraction.
I propose to start by deciding that all of what we do at school should directly promote learning - as much as possible. The great majority of tests, quizzes, evaluations etc. should be part of a feedback mechanism (see post) to improve teaching and learning. An exam examines the state of the teaching/learning; it doesn't evaluate if a student is good or evil. It would take an effort, but testing can be repositioned - reframed - as feedback:
The test's questions, even before they are answered, tell the students what the teacher expected them to have learned, and to be able to do. Just reading the test, the student can learn something new. Possible feedback messages from reading the test include: "Hey, you didn't teach that" (feedback to the teacher) or "I see I missed a whole aspect of what I studied" (feedback to the student) or "This test is too easy - we know more than that, so it doesn't provide enough relevant feedback" (feedback to the teacher).
Having answered the questions, or performed the tasks prescribed by the test, and having a teacher or peer review and comment on them, the student gets finer feedback, like: "I see I misunderstood part of the issue" or "The reviewer didn't understand my answer, because I didn't express myself clearly".
Reviewing the results for a whole class can provide extra feedback to the system: Good results mean teaching was done well, and there may be something useful peers can learn from the teacher. Slightly poor results mean teaching methods should be improved. One-time seriously bad results mean the curriculum should be temporarily adjusted to go over the material again, probably with a different method.
Reviewing the results from many classes, accounting for different teaching methods is called "research." It provides feedback for the whole education system. Comparing such results can enable improvement of teaching methodology over the whole system.
Reality keeps interfering: Judgement and damnation are not completely eliminated: Only in extreme cases, when the feedback doesn't work, will the tests ultimately will result in unpleasantness. For example, consistently poor results for a specific teacher's classes may mean the teacher should be removed. Consistently poor results for a student may ultimately mean having to move to a different class, with possible difficult social status consequences. The trick is to keep the main mass of testing as a feedback mechanism, for the benefit of the mainstream students. At the extreme bottom - we haven't solved the problem yet.
Grading and comparison: There is a view that says that every student must be treated strictly as an individual, and not be compared with others. But out-of-school reality doesn't work that way: When a company considering hiring an employee, or promoting an employee, it doesn't use individualized assessments: The contenders are graded and are being compared, and the one with the best weighted sum of qualifications - wins. Even closer to the students' lives, in sports - the fastest runner gets the gold; not the one who tried most. So, a side effect of testing can remain the grades. Competition over grades can be a powerful motivator, though care should be taken to avoid cutthroat competition that seeks to harm the competition instead of advancing oneself.
One aspect of potentially constructive grading and comparison is international tests, which provide feedback for the whole system, showing its standing in comparison to other national education systems. What can we learn from Finland? What can we learn from Singapore?
As always, careful research is required, but it seems that if tests are conceived primarily as useful feedback, they can become that.
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