We treat assessment as a safeguard at the end of learning, when it is more powerful as a force that shapes learning from the start. In education, “don’t teach to the test” is often framed as a virtue. It sounds wise, even self-satisfied. What that framing quietly assumes, though, is that the test itself is stable and all-knowable. In reality, it isn’t. The test keeps moving—and the industry is where its movement becomes visible. Because the film industry itself is a test— and makes its judgments clear through who is hired, trusted, and asked back.

This is assessment as learning: the idea that the most meaningful evaluations do not sit at the end of learning but actively shape it. Assessment shows students what quality looks like and gives them something substantial to practice against.

Artificial intelligence has quietly shifted the finish line. Judgment matters more. Taste matters more. The ability to frame a problem now outweighs the ability to simply complete a task. Students don’t rise to encouragement alone. They rise to expectations—especially when those expectations are visible, shared, and difficult.

So yes, teach to the test. Just make the test resemble the world students are walking into. That isn’t narrowing education. It’s respecting both the students and the profession they are already entering.

Further reading:
Grant Wiggins’ work on backward design and authentic assessment is foundational to this argument. Wiggins consistently argued that the problem is not “teaching to the test,” but designing tests so trivial that teaching to them narrows learning rather than deepens it.