Time to Reassess Standardized Assessments

The Pandemic Pause on high stakes state tests has given us space to beg the question, “Why?”

Did anyone miss mandatory state assessments these past two years? Anyone?

Annual testing of millions of students is disruptive, costly, and not even entirely useful. So why do we do it?

The obvious reason we test students is to make sure they have learned the content. It’s a way for them to coalesce and apply new knowledge, or, in some cases, simply regurgitate information.

Teachers use data from assessments to tweak instruction, gather resources, validate curricular choices, and design individual supports or additional challenges for students. When we assess formatively, we’re looking at progress during the learning process. When we assess summatively, we want to know if they can put it all together by the end of it. (Teachers have compared the two as biopsy versus autopsy.) Both are needed.

Academic knowledge isn’t all we evaluate. It takes more than that for a child to mature, be successful, and become independent. We are constantly “taking a pulse” on our students’ physical and mental health, relationships with others, and development of executive function skills like organization and focus.

This is all already happening in nearly every classroom, so why do we need high stakes standardized tests? Testing and grading among classrooms and schools varies widely. The argument is that more uniform and objective measures are needed. One standard should allow fair comparisons to ensure accountability and equity.

Enter the feds.

Though states constitutionally are in charge of schools, the federal government exerts a strong influence through grants (and rhetoric). Title I grants fund low income programs and Title IX gender equality, for example. State and school budgets have come to rely on these funds to thrive. Schools must provide evidence to show they are in compliance with grant criteria. State test results are one kind of evidence.

What’s wrong with one big test to see how kids are doing?

As with everything, there is the ideal and then the reality.

One could say that life is a constant test, but adults seldom have to take formal graded assessments except for things like degrees, certifications, or a driver’s license.

K-12 students are tested constantly. If we assume two quizzes or tests each week, multiplied by six content areas, between September and March, students will have taken over 300 formal assessments of their knowledge.

On the heels of all that testing, in March-April, state assessments take over schools. Educators, students, and families manage it as a necessary evil, but can readily list a host of problems associated with them. Here are just a few.

Weeks of high stress test preparation and test taking disrupt learning.
Results are not actionable based on their timing and the long delay in receiving scores.
“Standardization” is inconsistent. For example, scoring levels are often adjusted after the testing.
Each year errors and content issues like biased language are identified.
They indirectly assess non-content factors like how well students and staff use the technology required to take the test, or how well they can keep still and quiet for several hours in a row.
They’ve inherited flaws in the Common Core standards on which they are based (whether they admit it or not).
Test content ends up being prescriptive: what gets tested gets taught.
They have not been shown to be accurate predictors of student success.

State assessments address a narrow band of skills and knowledge, focusing on literacy, numeracy, and some science. Dr. Chris Tienken points out that the standards and tests lack “…authentic twenty-first-century skills such as strategizing, entrepreneurship, persistence, empathy, socially conscious problem solving, cross-cultural collaboration and cooperation, intellectual and social curiosity, compassion, risk taking… leadership, [and] creativity.” (Tienken, 2021, p.125)

Another major concern is how the data from these tests is interpreted and how it is used. Typically they are reduced to a few numbers to rate teachers, leaders, schools, and districts. Punitive consequences are possible (labeled as needing improvement, state takeover, loss of funding), depending on the number chosen that year.

And students can suffer long term losses when these scores are used as the sole determinant for placing them in programs that are not ideally suited for them.

A once in a blue moon opportunity to rethink assessment.

During the pandemic, states asked for and were granted waivers for annual high stakes tests. Most reasonable people (including politicians) agreed that testing millions of students remotely would be nearly impossible. And even if you could, testing during a global crisis could hardly be accurate and fair. We wouldn’t be able to separate the influence of the pandemic on learning from its effect on the test process. Many more families would likely “opt out” their children to avoid the added anxiety.

But don’t we want to know how the pandemic impacted learning? In fact, we already do. Equity gaps widened, more students failed, and a small percentage didn’t show up for remote classes. Even without precise data, we know the setbacks. How to address those is another issue (see post “Loss and Found”), but more testing won’t help.

The pandemic pause from high stakes tests gave districts the chance to modify and rethink classroom assessments using their own expertise and data. Some narrowed the skills and knowledge tested to their essentials, or changed the kinds of assessments given to be more holistic, personal, and cheat-proof.

Without annual state testing, how do we know students are learning?

Educators have the available skills and resources to assess students thoroughly, fairly, and objectively. The suite of school-based practices already in use can, collectively:

assess more than a subset of minimum standards
target developmentally appropriate skills, knowledge, and understandings that consider the entire K-12 sequence of learning, not just a snapshot
mirror work and life challenges in authentic contexts that demonstrate competency
apply learning more holistically through performance or problem-based assessment
focus on growth and individual student mastery, in all its forms
incorporate regular formative assessment into classwork to provide up to the minute pulse-checks
act as multiple measures to place students in settings that challenge them and address their needs

We can be accountable without standardized tests. Accountability is more than a number. Educators ensure fairness, consistency, and compliance through:

Working together to standardize and compare results within departments, schools, and even counties
Digital assessment tools that adapt to learning levels and measure them against national norms (ex. NWEA MAP)
Multiple indicators of success, like attendance, work sample portfolios, student graduation rates
Teacher and administrator evaluation processes that include student success data
National standardized content assessments like the SAT, ACT, and AP exams
Objective skill assessments from industry, internships, and job placements
Hundreds of hours of ongoing staff professional development used to analyze data and constantly improve learning, the accuracy of assessment, and supports needed

Many would be relieved right now just to get back to the status quo, but the genies released this past year aren’t going back in their bottles. We’ve seen more clearly what works and doesn’t work. Large scale testing fits in the latter category. Now is the time to advocate for better approaches.

⚙ Dr. Marc

If you have a friend or colleague who speaks this kind of language, or would benefit from hearing it, feel free to forward this post.

Quote from The School Reform Landscape Reloaded (2021) by Christopher Tienken, Ed.D. https://christienken.com

When duplicating this post in any form, please make sure to include the attribution above.

May 2021