Pro & Con Quotes: Do Standardized Tests Improve Education in America?

“I have news for the testing industry and its cult: Those standardized test results, particularly for high school students, are dubious. Take it from my experience as a high school teacher for three decades, by the ninth or 10th grade, kids have mostly figured out that the results of these tests will have no impact on them. In fact, the smarter the kid, the sharper their critical reasoning, the more likely they are to have long ago made this calculation.

Educators are left to plead with them for their best effort. In that regard, such standardized tests are just as likely a measure of how much a student likes and respects their school and teachers as it is an assessment of their skills and knowledge. Often, too, it is mostly an indicator of their mood the day the test is administered.”

“Opt-out proponents argue, among other things, that “one-size-fits-all tests punish and discourage students who are already vulnerable” and “the tests themselves become the focus of education.” But after the major disruptions of 2020-22, I figured that even test-skeptical parents might reconsider the value of getting a straightforward accounting of learning loss that compared the progress of kids across schools and districts — to know whether their children are still playing catch-up post-pandemic….

Without standardized testing, we won’t know where to put the most resources, or what the contours of the problems students face even look like. Getting rid of widespread assessments won’t help the most vulnerable children; it will only leave us without knowledge about how best to support them.”

“[T]here is bipartisan support for these tests. Republicans and Democrats agree we need an objective accounting of whether students are really learning, or simply being shuffled through the system.

Tests are particularly important for poor kids, minority kids, kids with special needs, and others who for decades simply weren’t learning at the rates their white and more affluent peers were. How do we know there’s an achievement gap? Because all kids across a given state have to take the same tests… Students need to learn, and teachers need to know if students are learning. How do we know if that’s happening? By giving tests.”

“State standardized exams help parents, educators, and policymakers understand which kids are on track—who is falling behind—so that the adults can act accordingly to better meet students’ needs. This information is more crucial than ever this year given that traditional schooling is now upended…

The current pandemic has blown apart the public education system as we knew it—simultaneously exacerbating vulnerabilities for many children and forcing rapid innovation to meet this instructional moment. The adults in the system must now focus on two things in response: The first is safety for kids and educators. The second is accelerating academic progress for all kids, regardless of race, ethnicity, or disability.

We need to organize the rest of the system to support those outcomes, and high-quality tests are an important tool in that worthy effort.”

“If I don’t have testing data to make sure my child’s on the right track, I’m not able to intervene and say there is a problem and my child needs more. And the community can’t say this school is doing well, this teacher needs help to improve, or this system needs new leadership.

As a community, we cannot do that based on feeling. We have to have facts, and the only way we have these facts is by testing our children, assessing them, getting them what they need, getting the teachers what they need, and getting the system what it needs to improve. We owe that to our kids…

It’s really important to have a statewide test because of the income disparity that exists in our society. Black and Brown excellence is real, but just because a kid lives in Dorchester does not make his or her life is less valuable than a child that lives in Wellesley. And it is unfair to say that just by luck of birth that a child born in Wellesley is somehow entitled to a higher-quality education…

Testing is a tool for us to hold the system accountable to make sure our kids have what they need.”

“What exams test reflects what states want their students to learn — the standards. Comparing average scores between schools and districts is possible only because the same test is done. In measuring what students know, tests are a tremendous asset, providing important and reliable information that cannot be learned in other ways…

To parents who are not educators, the process of creating standardized tests might seem like a big black box. In fact, it’s a rigorous and highly scientific process, one that has been developed over 100 years and reflects research by generations of esteemed scholars. It has its own subfield, psychometrics, and every year universities graduate new Ph.D.s in that subfield.”

“Standardized tests are a spotlight that helps education leaders see what effect schools are having on students. With that information they can make changes to address students’ needs…

Standardized tests help principals and other school leaders figure out which groups of students are struggling and gives them the evidence they need to push for changes.

Before we had standardized tests, some might have been able to intuitively sense which students were falling behind, but they didn’t have much in the way of hard evidence to back it up. Without evidence, it’s hard to justify the sometimes uncomfortable changes needed to help students.”