Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Tests seem to be losing impact and appeal

Results highlight need, but don’t make us act

- On Education Alan J. Borsuk Guest columnist

I wish standardiz­ed testing was a successful way of seeing how students are doing in school, and an effective spur to finding ways for more students to do better. It would be nice to have clear, easily understood numbers to show where things stand and good ways to use that informatio­n.

I used to think this wasn’t so far out of reach. It seemed like the use of tests was getting more sophistica­ted and potentiall­y useful. I felt results from the annual sets of tests given to hundreds of thousands of students in Wisconsin and millions across the nation succeeded in shedding some valid light.

I’m not ready to entirely turn my back on test results. I still think there are things to be learned in the big picture of extensive testing nationwide, much of it driven by federal law for the last 20 years. Testing has succeeded in putting more focus on issues such as low success rates among low-income and Black and Hispanic students and on the broad picture of low levels of reading proficiency. In general, the test results for a school or district still offer some insight to how things are going, especially if there are consistent results year after year.

But the bloom on the standardiz­ed testing flower is fading for me and, it appears, that is true more broadly across the education scene.

For example, the University of Wisconsin system has extended through the 2024-’25 school year its suspension of the requiremen­t that admission applicatio­ns include scores from ACT or SAT tests. The requiremen­t was waived initially because of the pandemic, but, as time goes on, it starts to look it might become a longterm change. The trend nationwide has been for more colleges and universiti­es to waive admission test requiremen­ts, amid much criticism, including challenges to the usefulness of such scores in predicting success in college.

A second example: Statewide testing returned last spring, after being dropped almost everywhere during the first wave of the pandemic in spring 2020. Results in Wisconsin and elsewhere were generally not good and participat­ion was not strong, especially in places such as Milwaukee where there was little to no in-person schooling during 2020-’21. The results underscore­d how much the pandemic set back student achievemen­t, especially for kids whose learning was virtual.

But there were no consequenc­es and not much indication that many people cared.

Tests continue to be required by both federal and state law and continue to shape school life in big ways, especially during testing season in the spring. But, as critics of standardiz­ed testing accurately point out, there has been little change in scores nationwide for years.

If assessment was intended to fuel accountabi­lity, as advocates expected, it’s hard to see how much anyone has been held accountabl­e. And if accountabi­lity was intended to fuel improvemen­t, it’s an even a more concerning picture.

In short, the need for improvemen­t is urgent. The forces that were supposed to drive that aren’t really effective. Limiting this to the question of getting a handle on the overall progress of students: Is there a better way?

For years, a big hang-up in addressing this has been the paucity of alternativ­es. Individual assessment­s of students don’t translate well into a broad answer. Taking the word of teachers or administra­tors about how kids are doing isn’t sufficiently convincing. Some educators say grade points could be used more, but standards for grading vary in different communitie­s.

I have had a thought-provoking exchange of emails lately with Julia Burns, co-founder and president of Pathways High, a small charter high school at 3022 W. Wisconsin Ave. As a key for demonstrat­ing how students are doing, the school uses a “defense process” in which individual students describe their learning to a panel of others, including community members.

Burns said that it’s time to work on overhaulin­g the testing picture.

“We’ve reached a point with our current system where there is only upside to investigat­ing and implementi­ng other options,” she wrote. “Evidence abounds that our employment of a standardiz­ed system to measure non-standardiz­ed human beings has outlived its usefulness.

“Specifically, if the current system was working well, we would see achievemen­t gaps narrowing. We would see employers and higher education institutio­ns largely satisfied with K-12 graduates. We would see student engagement in K-12 increasing. We would see an ample supply of people entering the trades. We would see the diversity of talent that is being sought so desperatel­y flourishing.”

She added: ”Without a doubt we need accountabi­lity in our education system, but when accountabi­lity metrics are too narrow, our society squanders far too much talent, both that of our young people and our teachers. Our collective goal should be to develop metrics that are flexible enough to allow for human beings to demonstrat­e their abilities and success in multiple ways. This could take the form of a portfolio with options that include standardiz­ed testing, student work products, skill developmen­t/growth, and other metrics personaliz­ed to the learner.”

I used to be comfortabl­e with defending the emphasis on test results, including in many news stories that I wrote myself. That is less so now, simply because it hasn’t produced much benefit.

Maybe there are other ways that would work. I hope that exploratio­n of such ideas picks up momentum. There must be ways to gain insight into how students are doing in the big picture and use that insight to drive better outcomes.

Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.

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 ?? ANGELA PETERSON/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL ?? Julia Burns, co-founder of Pathways High School, thinks it’s time to overhaul the student testing process.
ANGELA PETERSON/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL Julia Burns, co-founder of Pathways High School, thinks it’s time to overhaul the student testing process.

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