Students With Highest Gains On Standardized Test Scores Do Not Show Similar Gains To Analyze Abstract Problems And Think Logically

From Association for Psychological Science, Press Release, "Even When Test Scores Go Up, Some Cognitive Abilities Don’t:"

But new research shows that schools whose students have the highest gains on [standardized] test scores do not produce similar gains in “fluid intelligence” — the ability to analyze abstract problems and think logically.

The research, conducted by researchers at MIT, Harvard University, and Brown University, is forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Data from nearly 1,400 eighth-graders in the Boston public school system showed that some schools have successfully raised their students’ scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). However, those schools had almost no effect on students’ performance on tests of fluid intelligence skills, such as working memory capacity, speed of information processing, and ability to solve abstract problems.

"It doesn’t seem like you get these skills for free in the way that you might hope, just by doing a lot of studying and being a good student," says psychological scientist and senior author John Gabrieli, the Grover M. Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology, professor of brain and cognitive sciences, at MIT.