Building Back Better?
by Robin Jacobowitz
and Fred Smith - March 2, 2021
This week, the United States Department of
Education (USDE) sent a letter to chief state school officers directing them to
administer state-level standardized testing in
2021.
We support the search for understanding the
impacts the pandemic has had on our students and schools. But we object to the
premise that imposing the tests in 2021 will yield any meaningful answers
either about its effect on students and teachers or regarding the numerous ways
instruction has been organized and delivered this school year.
We find no justifiable logic in administering
these statewide tests to a population of young people already enduring a year
of disruption and hardship. As students and teachers struggle through unmatched
upheaval, the USDE is choosing to deprive them of precious instructional time
and instead subject them to mind-numbing exams whose worth, as we have previously written, was questionable even in good years.
These exams are not needed to tell us what we
already know: student learning has suffered this year, and even more so for
students from disadvantaged and traditionally marginalized backgrounds. In
requiring the tests, the USDE is reverting to old habits in a crisis and
failing to exert educational leadership. In 2021, testing becomes a ship
without an anchor.
Then there are the practical concerns.
We object to the loss of time and resources
that administering the tests will entail. The conduct of mass standardized testing
is not a simple endeavor. There is a multi-million dollar price tag that goes
to private vendors who are responsible for
test development. Even if the 2021 exams incorporate questions developed but not
used in 2020, there are the associated costs of test administration — producing
the exams (in print or computerized form) and ancillary materials, and
providing for their shipment and security. Added to these are the contractual
expenditures paid to testing companies for scoring, data processing and
reporting services.
Beyond that is the immeasurable value of the
time and effort that students and teachers invest in test preparation and
sitting for the exams — and the toll paid in test anxiety during an already
extremely stressful school year.
Moreover, with testing suspended in 2020 at
the federal level, what is the proposed baseline against which to measure pupil
achievement, class performance, different learning arrangements and various
modes of testing? In “normal” times, these are legitimate areas of
investigation for state- and district-wide test populations, as are
investigation of subgroup outcomes and comparison of ways in which instruction
is delivered. That’s not the case here.
To contemplate bringing students and teachers
to school over the summer for the purpose of taking a test clearly disregards
the weight they have shouldered this school year and ignores the serious
financial straits many districts currently face.
The “flexibility” offered by the USDE renders
the process confusing and cumbersome, and in effect, un-standardizes the
process. Most significant for a testing regime seeking useful information, this
flexibility makes the tests unreliable.
Such concessions place an even greater burden
on administrators as they figure out how to give the tests; on teachers who
must adjust their lesson plans to accommodate the exams; and on students who
are targeted to take them. They beg questions about what we learn from a
scrambled exercise in which participating school districts may follow different
procedures.
With New York and other states balking at the
prospect of testing this year, maybe we’ll see a re-awakening of the grass
roots opt-out movement. We agree that it is important to understand how our
students have fared through this pandemic. But forcing the administration of
state-level tests is an impediment to that goal, and does not help us reach
it.
We should turn to our teachers for a frontline
assessment of where their students are and elicit their thoughts about how we
might address deficiencies and inequities going forward. Instead it seems that
Washington D.C. is bent on taking the absurdity of testing to another level.
President Biden promised that teachers would have a friend in the White House.
USDE’s first step, however, signals business as usual. Is this how we “build
back better?”
In
December of 2019, Joe Biden promised that if elected, he would stop
standardized testing. Yet the U.S. Department of Education has announced
that states must test students in the midst of the pandemic. That is a
wrongheaded policy that puts data first and children last. Write Joe
Biden. Tell him to step in and cancel the tests.
1. Pick up the phone and call the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414.
Here is a suggested script.
"My
name is (name) from (state). I am calling to ask the President to keep
his promise about eliminating standardized testing. Forcing schools to
administer annual tests undermines the administration's call to support
our students' social-emotional and mental health in this time of
crisis. The tests must be canceled. Period."
2. Then pick up the phone and call the U.S. Department of Education at this number 800-872-5327. Press 3.
Here is a suggested script.
"My
name is (name) from (state). I strongly opposed Mr. Rosenblum's recent
letter that forces schools to administer annual tests this year. All of
our schools' efforts must be used to support our students'
social-emotional and mental health in this time of crisis. Test results
will be meaningless. Please tell Dr. Cardona that tests must be canceled. Period."
3. Finally, send an email to the White House by clicking here (letter prepared by our friends at NYC Opt Out).
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