Tests seem to be losing impact and appeal
Results highlight need, but don’t make us act
I wish standardized testing was a successful way of seeing how students are doing in school, and an effective spur to finding 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 proficiency. In general, the test results for a school or district still offer some insight to how things are going, especially if there are consistent results year after year.
But the bloom on the standardized testing flower 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 first 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 effective. 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 sufficiently convincing. Some educators say grade points could be used more, but standards for grading vary in different 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.
“Specifically, if the current system was working well, we would see achievement gaps narrowing. We would see employers and higher education institutions largely satisfied 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 flourishing.”
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 flexible 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 benefit.
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.