# data[].attributes.body
This article goes back to the beginning of standardized testing, discusses how it started, and how we got where we are today in terms of its prevalence in our education system. It started in 1845 as a way to replace oral examinations. The thought at the time was that it would actually provide children with more equal opportunities. Unfortunately, over the years the tests became more of a measure of academic ability than of academic achievement. The education systems curriculum then because more focused on these tests and more rigid in terms of what and how to teach.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 1845 educational pioneer Horace Mann had an idea. Instead of annual oral exams, he suggested that Boston Public School children should prove their knowledge through written tests. According to Carole J. Gallagher, who wrote about the history of standardized tests in a 2003 paper for Education Psychology Review, Mann's goal was to find and replicate the best teaching methods so that all children could have equal opportunities.

The standardized testing movement didn't really take hold in a big way until quite a bit later, but it's made up for the slow start in recent decades, becoming central to how our educational system works.

Standardized tests are central in modern secondary and college education. How did we get here?

Unlike Mann's exam, many of the first widely adopted standardized school tests were designed not to measure achievement but ability. Intelligence tests, and similar assessments that grew in prominence in the early twentieth century, had an aura of scientific objectivity. The Army Alpha and Beta Tests, developed during World War I to sort soldiers by their mental abilities, became a model for the schools.

Testing promised a way to identify kids who might go on to great things while avoiding wasting resources on "slow children." This went along with the growth of academic tracking to set students on the career path deemed appropriate for them. The most important test of ability, the College Entrance Examination Board-later renamed the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT-began in the 1920s.

In the 1960s, the federal government started pushing new achievement tests designed to evaluate instructional methods and schools. The weight placed on those tests grew over the decades as the Cold War and the globalizing economy put a spotlight on schools' production of a skilled workforce.

One big question about standardized tests is whether they help or hurt students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In a 2008 paper for the Annual Review of Sociology, Eric Grodsky, John Robert Warren, and Erika Felts look at the complicated relationship between testing and social inequality.

Some proponents of testing have promoted it at least partly as an antidote to rigid class structures. The SAT, for example, was designed partly to make top colleges into places for clever young men from all backgrounds, not just the children of the elite. But modern critics note that standardized test scores largely reflect socioeconomic privilege. That's partly because rich kids with mediocre scores can juice their results with expensive private test preparation courses. Also, though, differences in test results among students from different backgrounds may be related to an array of issues from early childhood malnutrition to differences in resources available at local schools.

Grodsky, Warren, and Felts argue that tests don't necessarily create more social stratification. Instead, they mostly seem to reflect the academic advantages that go with socioeconomic privilege among American kids. But, of course, that's evidence that despite Horace Mann's hopes for standardized tests, equal opportunity for all children still hasn't become reality.

Resources

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Short History of Standardized Tests | JSTOR Daily

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1845 educational pioneer Horace Mann had an idea. Instead of annual oral exams, he suggested that Boston Public School children should prove their knowledge through written tests. According to Carole J. Gallagher, who wrote about the history of standardized tests in a 2003 paper for Education Psychology Review, Mann's goal was to find and replicate the best teaching methods so that all children could have equal opportunities.

# data[].attributes.body
This article goes over the history of education and standardization in America, discusses what all is being standardized in education, talks about who sets these standards, weighs the benefits and challenges, and questions if equity and standardization are compatible. This article focuses on multiple forms of standardization in the education system incuding:

Standardized level, pace, and path of learning

Standardized curriculum

Standardized assessments

Standardized expectations

Standardized level of digital access

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By Dr. Laura Latta, M.Ed., Ph.D., Director of Post-Secondary Partnerships & Research

This is the second installment in the ImpactTulsa multi-part series, Equity in Education.
The first installment of the equity series, Defining Equity, Equality, and Standardization, discusses the conceptual differences between equality and equity. Equality refers to the equal treatment, opportunity, and access to resources. Equity is the personalization of resources to the needs of individuals that will help them reach common goals. This post explores the history and context of standardization in public education so that the reader can decide whether or not equity and standardization can co-exist.
Since the mid 1800s, schools in the US have embraced standardization ( Alcocer, 2019). In many school systems, the content that children learn, the way that the information is shared, and how deeply it is understood are all standardized as content learning standards, curriculum, and standardized tests. The primary motivations for standardization in school systems are to protect students' educational experiences and ensure that all students, regardless of where they live, have comparable school experiences resulting in similar learning outcomes.

However, every student brings a unique set of experiences, talents, resources, and needs that influence his or her learning. Two people can experience the same lesson and walk out of the room with very different levels of understanding. Standardization assumes that if every individual is exposed to the very same sets of instructional conditions (also assuming that every teacher teaches the exact same way), the result will be that all students walk away with the same level of knowledge.
The History of Education and Standardization in America
This post poses important questions for the reader to consider: Does the logic of standardization take into consideration the individualized nature of effective teaching and learning? Moreover, can standardization and equity co-exist?

To answer such big questions, it is important to ground ourselves in historical context.

The first free public school in America opened in 1635 ( Chen, 2018). Schooling priorities in colonial America were limited to teaching skills to support the home, sharing puritanical values, and supporting literacy through biblical readings. When towns began to develop systems and structures for schooling, preparation for higher education soon became a priority (Harvard was the sole institution at the time). During the Jeffersonian era, one of the biggest challenges was equalizing the quality of education that students were receiving from town to town. This concern about equality ushered in the need for more consistency in education and the development of a school system. The first state board of education began in 1837 in Massachusetts.

Even with the presence of a state board of education and with the establishment of the federal Department of Education in 1867, the educational experiences of students in the 19th century varied widely and many students completed their educations in under-resourced, one room schoolhouses. In the 1900s, school systems continued to organize under the guidance of state and federal departments of education. Centralizing power to district and state boards of education was one strategy intended to standardize the experiences of students and improve the quality of education.
What is being Standardized?
In recounting the 384 year history of American education, it is important to note that students and families of color were excluded entirely from attending or participating in the early development of the American public education system. Prior to the Civil War in 1861, educating an enslaved person was considered a criminal act. During the post-war Reconstruction era, African American, Native American, Latinx, and communities of color across the nation had to fight for their rights to attend school. It was not until the Brown v Board of Education ruling in 1954 that people of color were able to freely access public education.

The reality is that people of color have only been able to freely access public education for 17% of the time that public schools have existed in America. Many voices and perspectives were excluded during the development of the systems and standards of public education that shape our education system today.

In Education Standardization: Essential or Harmful?, Marie Bjerede (2013) breaks down the elements of public education that are standardized and makes cases for their advantages and disadvantages. Among these standardized elements of school are the following (quoted from the article):
Who Sets the Standards?

Standardized level, pace, and path of learning

Standardized curriculum

Standardized assessments

Standardized expectations

Standardized level of digital access

Stepping back to view the different ways that the school experience can be standardized reveals how much of the school day is dictated by those who have set the standards.
Benefits and Challenges of Standardization
In today's public education system, decision making power belongs primarily to the state and local governments ( US Department of Education, 2017). In Oklahoma, the state legislature grants decision making power to the state department of education to develop and maintain standards of instruction (i.e. what students should learn and be able to do at each grade level). Many states have adopted Common Core standards. Oklahoma created its own set of standards, the Oklahoma Academic Standards, which were developed and reviewed by a committee comprised of Oklahoma educators. The Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) selects the standardized assessments given to gauge student learning at the end of the school year. The Oklahoma State Board of Education grants approval for the selected assessments.

School districts (and some individual schools) have the power to select which curricula that teachers use for planning and implementing instruction. These curricula include the scope and sequence (learning goals and lessons) that dictate the level, pace, and path of learning for each lesson. Some school leaders require that teachers follow the curriculum as written with little variation (high standardization). Others grant teachers the professional autonomy to supplement and personalize the curriculum to students' needs (lower standardization).
Are Equity and Standardization Compatible?
As is the case in nearly every social sector, having a set of standards can serve to protect the experiences of individuals in the system (i.e. students, parents, teachers, administrators. etc.). Standards can also be helpful in supporting and reporting student outcomes. Paradoxically, they can also be just as harmful by preventing students from experiencing individualized instruction and equitable supports for success. The table below details how some of the perceived benefits of standardization can also be perceived challenges:

Perspective A

Perspective B

Standardized Assessments

Measuring student outcomes with standardized tests can help to expose inequity in teaching/learning so that changes can be made to support learning for all.

Standardized tests used to measure student learning outcomes often don't capture important elements of learning like soft skills, goal setting, and cultural competence.

Standardized Curriculum

Providing a common curriculum increases the likelihood that students will be exposed to the same information. Hence, they should walk away with the same learning.

Curriculum is delivered by an instructor whose presentation of that information is unique. Though the curriculum and information may be the same, the personal interaction associated with the teaching may support different learning outcomes for different students.

Standardized Learning Outcomes

Having a common set of learning standards and expectations about what students should know helps to level the playing field for all students.

The mere existence of a common set of learning standards doesn't effectively level the playing field for students if the barriers to learning and the limits to education access aren't first addressed.

Recognizing that equity is based on the needs of the individual and the purpose of standardization is to provide common learning experiences for the masses, the two definitions appear to conflict. Make no mistake, standardization is an important part of education and thinking through how to navigate the tension between meeting the needs of individuals and protecting the quality of their experiences through standardization is very important. However, holding standardization as the most important priority risks overlooking the capabilities, talents, and learning needs of individuals. Taking into consideration the history of public education and the perspectives that have been included and omitted (communities of color) from the system's development further drives the conversation about whether the public education system is developing standards that support an equitable education for all students.

Through the exploration of multiple sources of information, this blog post serves as a prompt to spark thoughts about equality, equity, and standardization. The reader is encouraged to consider the information shared, research more (see the reference list), and form an opinion, which can be shared in the comment section below. The closing of this blog post is not a statement, but a question for the reader. Reader: what are your thoughts about equity and standardization? Are they compatible?

Stay tuned for the next installment in the equity series: Equity in Education: Student and Family Centered Approaches

References

Alcocer, P. (2019). History of standardized testing in the United States. National Education

Association. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/home/66139.htm#1838-1890.
https://www.gettingsmart.com/2013/04/education-standardization-essential-or-harmful/
Bjerede, M. (2013). Education standardization: Essential or harmful? Getting Smart. Retrieved

from

Chen, G. (2018). A relevant history of public education in the United States. Public School
http://www.corestandards.org/
Review. Retrieved from https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/a-relevant-history-of-public-education-in-the-united-states.

Common Core Standards Initiative (2019). Home: Common core standards. Retrieved from

Oklahoma State Department of Education (2019). Oklahoma academic standards. Retrieved
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html
from https://sde.ok.gov/oklahoma-academic-standards

United States Department of Education (2017). The federal role in education. Retrieved from

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Equity and Standardization: Are they Compatible? - Impact Tulsa

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By Dr. Laura Latta, M.Ed., Ph.D., Director of Post-Secondary Partnerships & Research This is the second installment in the ImpactTulsa multi-part series, Equity in Education. The first installment [...]

# data[].attributes.body
This article gives a brief history of standardized testing and includes nonpartisan pros and cons of having this implemented in schools. Some arguments include whether standardized testing actually gives a good estimate of academic performance or if it just determines which students are good at test taking, whether it helps or hurts marginalized groups, if test results are good predictors of college and job success or not, and if these tests provide good metrics on a teachers performance.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Standardized tests have been a part of American education since the mid-1800s. Their use skyrocketed after 2002's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) mandated annual testing in all 50 states. US students slipped from being ranked 18th in the world in math in 2000 to 40th in 2015, and from 14th to 25th in science and from 15th to 24th in reading. Failures in the education system have been blamed on rising poverty levels, teacher quality, tenure policies, and, increasingly, on the pervasive use of standardized tests.

Proponents argue that standardized tests offer an objective measurement of education and a good metric to gauge areas for improvement, as well as offer meaningful data to help students in marginalized groups, and that the scores are good indicators of college and job success. They argue standardized tests are useful metrics for teacher evaluations.

Opponents argue that standardized tests only determine which students are good at taking tests, offer no meaningful measure of progress, and have not improved student performance, and that the tests are racist, classist, and sexist, with scores that are not predictors of future success. They argue standardized tests are useful metrics for teacher evaluations.
Read more background...
Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1

Standardized tests offer an objective measurement of education and a good metric to gauge areas for improvement.

Teachers' grading practices are naturally uneven and subjective. An A in one class may be a C in another. Teachers also have conscious and unconscious biases for a favorite student or against a rowdy student, for example. Standardized tests offer students across the country a unified measure of their knowledge.

Aaron Churchill, Ohio Research Director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, stated, "At their core, standardized exams are designed to be objective measures. They assess students based on a similar set of questions, are given under nearly identical testing conditions, and are graded by a machine or blind reviewer. They are intended to provide an accurate, unfiltered measure of what a student knows."

Frequently states or local jurisdictions employ psychometricians to ensure tests are fair across populations of students. Mark Moulon, PhD, Chief Executive Officer at Pythias Consulting and psychometrician, offered an example: "If you find that your question on skateboarding is one that boys find to be an easy question, but girls find to be a hard question, that'll pop up as a statistic. Differential item functioning will flag that question as problematic."

Moulon continued, explaining, "What's cool about psychometrics is that it will flag stuff that a human would never be able to notice. I remember a science test that had been developed in California and it asked about earthquakes. But the question was later used in a test that was administered in New England. When you try to analyze the New England kids with the California kids, you would get a differential item functioning flag because the California kids were all over the subject of earthquakes, and the kids in Vermont had no idea about earthquakes."

With problematic questions removed, or adapted for different populations of students, standardized tests offer the best objective measure of what students have learned. Taking that information, schools can determine areas for improvement. As Bryan Nixon, former Head of School at private school Whitby, noted, "When we receive standardized test data at Whitby, we use it to evaluate the effectiveness of our education program. We view standardized testing data as not only another set of data points to assess student performance, but also as a means to help us reflect on our curriculum. When we look at Whitby's assessment data, we can compare our students to their peers at other schools to determine what we're doing well within our educational continuum and where we need to invest more time and resources."
Read More

Pro 2

Standardized tests offer meaningful data to help students in marginalized groups.

Keri Rodrigues, Co-founder of the National Parents Union, explained, "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... 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 [Massachusetts] does not make his or her life is less valuable than a child that lives in Wellesley [Massachusetts]. 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. "

Sheryl Lazarus, PhD, Director of the National Center on Educational Outcomes at the University of Minnesota, stated, "a real plus of these assessments is that they've really shone a light on the differences across sub-groups. And they have led to improvements in access to instruction for students with disabilities and English learners... Inclusion of students with disabilities and English learners in summative tests used for accountability allows us to measure how well the system is doing for these students, and then it is possible to fill in gaps in instructional opportunity."

Advocates for marginalized groups of students, whether by race, learning disability, or other difference, can use testing data to prove a problem exists and to help solve the problem via more funding, development of programs, or other solutions. Civil rights education lawsuits wherein a group is suing a local or state government for better education almost always use testing data.

Chris Stewart, CEO of brightbeam, summarizes, "We only know that there's a difference between White students and Black students and other students of color because we have the data. We only know about that because we have assessments."

A letter signed by 12 civil rights organizations including the NAACP and the American Association of University Women, explained, "Data obtained through some standardized tests are particularly important to the civil rights community because they are the only available, consistent, and objective source of data about disparities in educational outcomes, even while vigilance is always required to ensure tests are not misused. These data are used to advocate for greater resource equity in schools and more fair treatment for students of color, low-income students, students with disabilities, and English learners... [W]e cannot fix what we cannot measure. And abolishing the tests or sabotaging the validity of their results only makes it harder to identify and fix the deep-seated problems in our schools."
Read More

Pro 3

Standardized tests are useful metrics for teacher evaluations.

While grades and other measures are useful for teacher evaluations, standardized tests provide a consistent measure across classrooms and schools. Individual school administrators, school districts, and the state can compare teachers using test scores to show how each teacher has helped students master core concepts.

Timothy Hilton, a high school social studies teacher in South Central Los Angeles, stated, "No self-respecting teacher would use a single student grade on a single assignment as a final grade for the entirety of a course, so why would we rely on one source of information in the determination of a teacher's overall quality? The more data that can be provided, the more accurate the teacher evaluation decisions will end up being. Teacher evaluations should incorporate as many pieces of data as possible. Administration observation, student surveys, student test scores, professional portfolios, and on and on. The more data that is used, the more accurate the picture it will paint."
Read More

Pro 4

Standardized tests scores are good indicators of college and job success.

Standardized tests can offer evidence of and promote academic rigor, which is invaluable in college as well as in students' careers. Matthew Pietrafetta, PhD, Founder of Academic Approach, argues that the "tests create gravitational pull toward higher achievement."

Elaine Riordan, senior communications professional at Actively Learn, stated, "[C]onsiderable research suggests that interventions that help students improve test scores are linked to better adult outcomes such as college attendance, higher incomes, and the avoidance of risky behaviors... In other words, creating learning environments that lead to higher test scores is also likely to improve students' long-term success in college and beyond... Recent research suggests that the competencies that the SAT, ACT, and other standardized tests are now evaluating are essential not just for students who will attend four-year colleges but also for those who participate in CTE programs or choose to seek employment requiring associate degrees and certificates. The researchers argue that all of these students require the same level of academic mastery to be successful after high school graduation."

Standardized test scores have long been correlated with better college and life outcomes. As Dan Goldhaber, PhD, Director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, and Umut Özek, PhD, senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research, summarize, "students who score one standard deviation higher on math tests at the end of high school have been shown to earn 12% more annually, or $3,600 for each year of work life in 2001... Similarly... test scores are significantly correlated not only with educational attainment and labor market outcomes (employment, work experience, choice of occupation), but also with risky behavior (teenage pregnancy, smoking, participation in illegal activities)."
Read More

Con 1

Standardized tests only determine which students are good at taking tests, offer no meaningful measure of progress, and have not improved student performance.

Standardized test scores are easily influenced by outside factors: stress, hunger, tiredness, and prior teacher or parent comments about the difficulty of the test, among other factors. In short, the tests only show which students are best at preparing for and taking the tests, not what knowledge students might exhibit if their stomachs weren't empty. External stereotypes also play a part in scores: "research indicates that being targeted by well-known stereotypes ('blacks are unintelligent,' 'Latinos perform poorly on tests,' 'girls can't do math' and so on) can be threatening to students in profound ways, a predicament they call 'stereotype threat.'"

Students are tested on grade-appropriate material, but they are not re-tested to determine if they have learned information they tested poorly on the year before. Instead, as Steve Martinez, EdD, Superintendent of Twin Rivers Unified in California, and Rick Miller, Executive Director of CORE Districts, note, each "state currently reports yearly change, by comparing the scores of this year's students against the scores of last year's students who were in the same grade. Even though educators, parents and policymakers might think change signals impact, it says much more about the change in who the students are because it is not measuring the growth of the same student from one year to the next."

Further, because each state develops its own tests, standardized tests are not necessarily comparable across state lines, leaving nationwide statistics shaky at best.

Brandon Busteed, Executive Director, Education & Workforce Development at the time of the quote, stated, "Despite an increased focus on standardized testing, U.S. results in international comparisons show we have made no significant improvement over the past 20 years, according to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The U.S. most recently ranked 23rd, 39th and 25th in reading, math and science, respectively. The last time Americans celebrated being 23rd, 39th and 25th in anything was ... well, never. Our focus on standardized testing hasn't helped us improve our results!"

Busteed asks, "What if our overreliance on standardized testing has actually inhibited our ability to help students succeed and achieve in a multitude of other dimensions? For example, how effective are schools at identifying and educating students with high entrepreneurial talent? Or at training students to apply creative thinking to solve messy and complex issues with no easy answers?"
Read More

Con 2

Standardized tests are racist, classist, and sexist.

The origin of American standardized tests are those created by psychologist Carl Brigham, PhD, for the Army during World War I, which was later adapted to become the SAT. The Army tests were created specifically to segregate soldiers by race, because at the time science inaccurately linked intelligence and race.

Racial bias has not been stripped from standardized tests. W. James Popham, PhD, Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles and former test maker, explains how discrimination is purposefully built in to standardized tests, "Traditionally constructed standardized achievements, the kinds that we've used in this country for a long while, are intended chiefly to discriminate among students ... to say that someone was in the 83rd percentile and someone is at 43rd percentile. And the reason you do that is so you can make judgments among these kids. But in order to do so, you have to make sure that the test has in fact a spread of scores. One of the ways to have that test create a spread of scores is to limit items in the test to socioeconomic variables, because socioeconomic status is a nicely spread out distribution, and that distribution does in fact spread kids' scores out on a test."

As Young Whan Choi, Manager of Performance Assessments Oakland Unified School District in Oakland, California, explains, "Too often, test designers rely on questions which assume background knowledge more often held by White, middle-class students. It's not just that the designers have unconscious racial bias; the standardized testing industry depends on these kinds of biased questions in order to create a wide range of scores." Choi offers an example from his own 10th grade class, "a student called me over with a question. With a puzzled look, she pointed to the prompt asking students to write about the qualities of someone who would deserve a "key to the city." Many of my students, nearly all of whom qualified for free and reduced lunch, were not familiar with the idea of a 'key to the city.'"

Wealthy kids, who would be more familiar with a "key to the city," tend to have higher standardized test scores due to differences in brain development caused by factors such as "access to enriching educational resources, and... exposure to spoken language and vocabulary early in life." Plus, as Eloy Ortiz Oakley, MBA, Chancellor of California Community Colleges, points out, "Many well-resourced students have far greater access to test preparation, tutoring and taking the test multiple times, opportunities not afforded the less affluent... [T]hese admissions tests are a better measure of students' family background and economic status than of their ability to succeed"

Journalist and teacher Carly Berwick explains, "All students do not do equally well on multiple choice tests, however. Girls tend to do less well than boys and perform better on questions with open-ended answers, according to a 2018 study by Stanford University's Sean Reardon, which found that test format alone accounts for 25 percent of the gender difference in performance in both reading and math. Researchers hypothesize that one explanation for the gender difference on high-stakes tests is risk aversion, meaning girls tend to guess less."
Read More

Con 3

Standardized tests are unfair metrics for teacher evaluations.

16 states and DC have stopped using standardized tests in teacher evaluations. [79] [80] As W. James Popham, PhD, noted, "standardized achievement tests should not be used to determine the effectiveness of a state, a district, a school, or a teacher. There's almost certain to be a significant mismatch between what's taught and what's tested."

Margaret Pastor, PhD, Principal of Stedwick Elementary School in Maryland, stated: "[A]n assistant superintendent... pointed out that in one of my four kindergarten classes, the student scores were noticeably lower, while in another, the students were outperforming the other three classes. He recommended that I have the teacher whose class had scored much lower work directly with the teacher who seemed to know how to get higher scores from her students. Seems reasonable, right? But here was the problem: The "underperforming" kindergarten teacher and the "high-performing" teacher were one and the same person."
Read More

Con 4

Standardized tests scores are not predictors of future success.

Standardized tests can only, at best, evaluate rote knowledge of math, science, and English. The tests do not evaluate creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, artistic ability, or other knowledge areas that cannot be judged by scoring a sheet of bubbles filled in with a pencil.

Grade point averages (GPA) are a 5 times stronger indicator of college success than standardized tests, according to a study of 55,084 Chicago public school students. One of the authors, Elaine M. Allensworth, PhD, Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium, stated, "GPAs measure a very wide variety of skills and behaviors that are needed for success in college, where students will encounter widely varying content and expectations. In contrast, standardized tests measure only a small set of the skills that students need to succeed in college, and students can prepare for these tests in narrow ways that may not translate into better preparation to succeed in college."

Matthew M. Chingos, PhD, Vice President of Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute, explained, "earning good grades requires consistent behaviors over time-showing up to class and participating, turning in assignments, taking quizzes, etc.-whereas students could in theory do well on a test even if they do not have the motivation and perseverance needed to achieve good grades. It seems likely that the kinds of habits high school grades capture are more relevant for success in college than a score from a single test."
Read More

Did You Know?

1. The earliest known standardized tests were administered to government job applicants in 7th Century Imperial China.

2. The Kansas Silent Reading Test (1914-1915) is the earliest known published multiple-choice test, developed by Frederick J. Kelly, a Kansas school director.

3. In 1934, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) hired a teacher and inventor named Reynold B. Johnson (best known for creating the world's first commercial computer disk drive) to create a production model of his prototype test scoring machine.

4. The current use of No. 2 pencils on standardized tests is a holdover from the 1930s through the 1960s, when scanning machines scored answer sheets by detecting the electrical conductivity of graphite pencil marks.

5. In 2020, states were allowed to cancel standardized testing due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Standardized Testing Pros and Cons - Does It Improve Education?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Proponents say the tests offer objective measurements of education. Opponents say tests only show which students are good at taking tests.

# data[].attributes.body
This article provides an analysis of standardized testing in schools and some of the laws and regulations relating to these standards. There is information regarding some of the most common criticisms of standardized testing and finally, it provides ideas to make these assessments more effective and equitable.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Part of a Series

In this article

Fourth grade students work on their math at an elementary school in Waukegan, Illinois, January 2016. (Getty/Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service)

This series is about the future of testing in America's schools.

Introduction and summary

Assessments are a way for stakeholders in education to understand what students know and can do. They can take many forms, including but not limited to paper and pencil or computer-adaptive formats. However, assessments do not have to be tests in the traditional sense at all; rather, they can be carried out through teacher observations of students or portfolios of students' work. Regardless of form, when assessments are well designed and a component of a system of teaching and learning that includes high-quality instruction and materials, they are part of the solution and not a source of the problem. Thus, debates on whether or not to assess students fail to create a worthwhile discussion about testing in schools and how to make assessments better.

When they are well built, standardized and nonstandardized assessments play a useful role in providing educational equity-that is, helping all students achieve at high levels. Accordingly, this report offers an alternative to the argument that all assessments are harmful: an idea for what role all assessments should play in education and the federal and state policy structure needed to make this a reality.

Assessments-in particular, one annual standardized assessment of all public school students in reading and math-became the law of the land starting in 2001 with the renewal and renaming of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 as the No Child Left Behind Act. The rationale for this policy is to promote equity in educational opportunity by measuring how well the public education system teaches students to master a state's academic standards in these subjects.

Despite this laudable goal, federally required assessments are at times criticized because America's students have made little progress since 2001 and their results correlate with race and socioeconomic status. However, the reality remains that one assessment alone is insufficient to solve the problem of inequity in education. That is because state standardized assessments look back at the end of the year and evaluate whether students learned the state's academic standards in reading and math. They are not designed to provide information to guide teachers' daily interactions with students. This type of high-quality information, as well as professional development in how to use student data effectively, is needed to drive learning forward. Thus, the state assessment must be part of a broader system of assessments that produce data that can evaluate, inform, and predict learning to help achieve educational equity.

The Center for American Progress found that while some of the criticisms of assessments-the annual state standardized assessment in particular-are valid and must be addressed, not all of them have merit. Too often, the criticisms tend to suggest that all standardized testing is harmful or not useful.

Still, improvement at the national scale is needed. The level of research and innovation required to make assessments effective can only be achieved through federal investment and programs. For example, federal policies should invest more in assessment development, through the pilot authorized in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and through existing assessment funding programs in that law. The federal government can play an important role in researching assessment design and understanding where and how it has a disparate impact on students. Finally, the federal government should use its resources to help ensure that teachers and school leaders become masters of local assessment development and use so that they have the data they need-when they need it-to guide student learning. And for their part, state policies should develop well-thought-out systems of assessments that are based on the state's learning standards and curriculum.

What are standardized assessments and what purpose do they serve?

Large-scale standardized assessments are just one type of assessment used in schools, with two main purposes: The first is used to predict student performance against a set of benchmarks, while the second is used to understand how many of the test's benchmarks students reached at the end of the year. That is, standardized assessments can be designed to be predictive or evaluative.

A standardized assessment presents test-takers with the same questions or the same types of questions and is administered and scored in the same way. Designed to provide consistent results, standardized tests allow for comparisons between students in a single year and over time.

Standardized assessments play a prominent role in education in the United States; all public school students must take assessments in reading and math each year in grades three through eight as well as once in high school. These tests measure what students know and can do against common state-developed, grade-level standards.

What is an academic standard?

An academic standard is what a student should know and be able to do in a particular subject. For example, a second grade student in math should know the ones and tens places in double-digit numbers.

Teachers are required to teach these standards and can use a wide variety of instructional materials and approaches to guide their students' learning. Thus, while federal law requires states to have the same academic standards for all students within the state, given the different levels of quality of instructional materials and practices, not all students have the same opportunity to learn and master those standards.

The other types of assessments in education, which are used to predict student performance and inform instruction, are used more frequently during the school year and help to guide teachers, administrators, and even parents in providing students with the right supports at the right time. Importantly, not all assessments produce a numbered score. Some, for example, can take the form of teacher observations of student work and produce a descriptive assessment.

3 technical qualities of assessments required by federal law

This text box provides definitions of validity, reliability, and comparability in assessments and why they matter:

Validity refers to how accurately and fully a test measures the skills it intends to measure.For example, if an algebra test includes some geometry questions, that test is not a valid measure of algebra.

Reliability refers to the consistency of the test scores across different testing sessions, different editions of the test, and when different people score the exam. Reliability indicates how consistently the test measures the knowledge and skills it should as well ensures that it is not measuring error.

Comparability allows for the comparison of test scores even if students took the test at different times, in different places, and under different conditions.For example, test developers will design a test that may be administered via computer or via paper and pencil to account for these differences so results can be compared.

These requirements help ensure apples-to-apples comparisons between the results of the test given on different days and under different conditions.

A state assessment's technical qualities are one tool to prioritize equity because they help ensure test results can answer the question, "How well are all students meeting a state's college- and career-ready standards in reading and math and growing in their knowledge?" Here, "college- and career-ready" means that when students meet or exceed the academic standards in reading and math, they qualify to enroll in credit-bearing courses in college. They do not need to take remedial classes to make up for unfinished learning needed for credit-bearing courses.

History of standardized assessments in the United States

Schools and standardized testing began in the first 100 years of the United States' founding, and it did so against a backdrop of systemic racism and white supremacy. Prior to the 1860s and emancipation, enslaved people and nonwhite people were barred from accessing education and were often punished if it was discovered they were learning to read and write. Education during this time period was reserved for the white elite.

It was within this context that the first uses of standardized tests in American education began.

College admissions, general intelligence, and K-12 achievement tests

Like in education in America, there is a deep history of racism within standardized assessments. The earliest use of assessments in America were oral qualifying exams for college admissions prior to 1840.

That year marked the first uses of standardized tests in public schools. In 1845, educator Horace Mann developed common exams for school students in Boston Public Schools in an attempt to understand the quality of teaching and learning.

Mann's test sparked psychologist Edward L. Thorndike's quest for other measures of intelligence, believing that society would benefit from systematic sorting and segregation of students by academic ability. Seven states-California, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania-used these exams from 1900 to 1910.

In 1905, commissioned by the French government, psychologist Alfred Binet developed an intelligence test to identify learning deficiencies, describing "slow children who would not profit significantly from schooling." And in 1916, Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman took Binet's original tеѕt and created the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales to sort students by ability into college or vocational pathways. This exam is still used today.

The U.S. Army used a multiple-choice test to measure soldiers' mental abilities for the purpose of sorting, assigning, and discharging them during World War I. This test would become the model for future standardized assessments. In 1919, Terman transformed the Army Alpha test into the National Intelligence Tests for school students, selling more than 400,000 copies in 11 months.

Testing to uphold white supremacy

Literacy tests were used to disenfranchise Black men after ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, until enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests and other methods of keeping Black people from exercising their right to vote.

Throughout the beginning of the 20th century, intelligence tests were used to determine which immigrants were "undesireable" and should not be permitted entry into the country. Federal law in 1915 required anyone who failed the test to be turned away.

Testing for public school evaluation and accountability

The use of standardized testing in schools spread nationwide after Iowa developed tests for its high school students. In 1935, the first Iowa Test of Basic Skills was administered to students in grades six through eight. Other states began using the Iowa assessment, which remained the most-used achievement test in the nation for 50 years.

But the role of testing in schools shifted in the 1970s after the then-U.S. commissioner of education created the first National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 1969. It sought to provide a snapshot of the progress of education in America, using the latest testing technology to produce sound and reliable results by assessing a representative sample of the nation's students.

The NAEP marks the modern era of standardized assessments in schools to evaluate learning and a shift away from measuring intelligence toward measuring academic standards.

In the 1990s, a handful of states developed statewide testing systems that used sampling methods much like the NAEP to take a representative snapshot of how well students perform on academic tests in various subjects.

Federal K-12 education laws and testing

Simply put, today's federal K-12 education laws ask states, in exchange for federal funding, to ensure that students are meeting grade-level benchmarks in reading and math. These benchmarks are set by experts in math and reading as well as in psychometrics, or the measurement of learning. The benchmarks increase in complexity grade by grade, so when students complete their education in 12th grade, they are ready for the academic demands of college-whatever form that might take-or their chosen career path. This report and the law refer to standards like these as high or rigorous standards. Federal law also asks states to evaluate schools based on these results and report these results publicly.

Federal policy did not start out this way; it has evolved since the 1990s, when states began adopting academic standards. The federal Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 asked states to apply the same standards in reading and math to all students and to assess their progress in learning the standards for the first time.

In 2001, Congress updated the Improving America's Schools Act, renaming it as the No Child Left Behind Act. The updated law required states to use those test results to evaluate schools and identify which ones needed improvement. States published those results publicly every year and gave them to parents. A 2011 federal initiative under the Obama administration, called ESEA Flexibility, allowed states to use additional criteria to evaluate schools, but most states' criteria primarily consisted of standardized test scores.

The follow-up to the No Child Left Behind Act, now called the Every Student Succeeds Act, maintains much of the policy from ESEA Flexibility. For example, ESSA asks states to use both test scores and other criteria to evaluate all public schools. It also requires states to identify a subset of its lowest-performing schools for which to provide additional support to help them improve.

The debate about standardized testing in schools often tends to miss that the assessment requirements in federal law serve a purpose: They are one way the law helps to ensure all students receive a high-quality education through the public education system. At its heart, ESSA is a civil rights law, providing additional resources to low-income students. It also protects the quality of education by asking states to ensure that all children learn the knowledge and skills that will help them in college and their careers. Measuring student progress toward a state's learning standards through an annual assessment is one way to know whether all students are on track or not, using a common measuring stick.

The civil rights goals of federal K-12 education laws

The first version of ESSA, then called the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), was built on the heels of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which both aimed to tackle segregation and discrimination. ESEA intended to give students from families with low resources a chance at equal education. Likewise, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975 (IDEA) ensured that all students with disabilities received this same opportunity. Prior to the passage of IDEA, many students with disabilities were excluded from traditional classrooms.

The first version of ESSA centered on the role that money plays in education. It gave additional funding to schools in under-resourced communities whose local property tax bases did not provide the same amount of resources as schools in wealthy neighborhoods.

ESSA's role more recently evolved to address not just education funding but also its quality. After years of flatlining, and even declining, results in educational outcomes, documented by the U.S. Department of Education report "A Nation at Risk," the law began to play a role in the effort to improve the quality of public school education. At the heart of this law-and what it requires-is an effort to include all students in public education and to hold them to the same high expectations. It does so by asking states to use their annual assessments as one measure of educational progress.

The goals of inclusion, high standards, and educational progress are the right goals. And the law has been effective in getting states to raise their standards and to include in states' accountability mechanisms for schools all students' progress on those standards. For example, states must certify that students who meet the standards when they graduate high school can enroll in college without needing remedial coursework to catch up on missed learning. And every year, states must calculate how many students met grade-level benchmarks against the goal of 95 percent of students, or the actual number of students who took the state assessment if it is lower than 95 percent.

But incremental and disproportionate progress on test scores between student groups suggests the law has been less effective in ensuring educational progress. This is in part because education is a complex process where students learn information, gain experience, and make sense of it all in a way that is useful to forging one's path in life. The complexity of learning at any age cannot and should not primarily be measured by a single test.

Furthermore, research documents that students' basic needs must be met for them to be ready to learn. This is especially true for the young mind in childhood, during which it develops more than at any other time in life.

However, as the adage goes, you cannot manage what you cannot measure-meaning that while state assessments are not the silver bullet to improving the education system, they are a critical part of that process. The role that state standardized assessments should play in education is to improve the teaching and learning system. State test results at the school district level, for example, should inform what resources and supports teachers need to improve their instruction. At the state level, results can inform state efforts to provide more resources to districts needing additional supports.

Is the issue with the test, or how the test is administered and used?

The opposition to using standardized testing in schools, in part due to the history of racism in the tests, is understandably not just a historical phenomenon; vestiges of this past remain in today's tests. Racism in testing is something that needs to be unpacked and addressed fully.

That said, some critics of standardized testing in schools miss that there are distinct issues to be acknowledged and then addressed-issues that reside with the test itself, how the test is given, and how the test results are used. These issues are too frequently treated as if they are one, so critics' response is often to throw out the annual state test entirely. But to address these issues, and to make future assessments of student learning better, policymakers must understand these issues distinctly, as each will require different policy remedies and technical fixes.

Criticisms of annual state standardized tests include: The tests are biased; they take too long to complete; students experience stereotype threat, which is an unconscious response to a negative stereotype about a certain group by a member of that group, when taking tests; the results are not useful for teachers; the use of these tests narrowed the curriculum used in schools; they resulted in teaching to the test; and the results are used to take money away from schools.

The authors organize these criticisms as outlined in Table 1.
Table 1
Not all criticisms of the state assessment have merit, nor do their real or perceived impacts affect students, teachers, and schools in the same way. To illustrate this, Table 1 presents these criticisms according to their real or perceived impact as well as by whether the impact is based on the assessment itself, how the assessment is administered, or how the assessment results are used. Understanding the effects and their source will help policymakers, administrators, and educators identify appropriate solutions for the root cause.

This section dissects these criticisms using a fact-based review to examine the purported impacts and deem whether they have merit and to what degree. The analysis cites claims where necessary.

Common criticism: The state standardized test is biased

Is this claim true or false? It is true, but there are multiple issues to understand.

When it comes to assessments, the term "bias" has a specific meaning. Bias happens when student inputs (their answers) are misinterpreted, misevaluated, and then scored differently.

There are three areas of the test where bias might occur: what it is trying to measure (the construct), how it is trying to measure (the method), or the test question itself (the item):

Construct bias is an error in the measurement of the skill; for example, an item is looking to measure verbal skills but instead measures listening skills.

Method bias is an error in the sample of students, the test form itself (in which the form is confusing), or the administration (how the test forms are given to students and collected is confusing).

Item bias is where the test question itself is ambiguous or can result in a low or high familiarity among certain test-takers due to cultural influence.

Since standardized testing began, there have always been racial patterns in the results, suggesting bias. While this bias was initially by design, as outlined in the history of racism and assessments section of this report, modern assessment development techniques seek to eliminate bias. However, a 2010 study of the SAT confirmed a particular type of bias within its assessments: item bias.

Bias in the news

A study of the SAT published in 2010 found that harder test items favored Black test-takers and easier questions favored white. That is, Black students taking the test more often answered the harder questions correctly at a higher rate than white students, who more often answered the easier questions correctly.

Why would this situation be the case?

Researchers theorize that the easier questions use more casual, everyday language that is part of white dominant culture. The study also suggests that the way the SAT is scored holds Black student scores down because the easier questions receive more points.

Therefore, if the harder questions received more points, this bias could be addressed when the test is scored. This example shows that even if there is bias in any aspect of the test, that bias can be balanced out in the scoring process. However, this method is not a complete answer to rooting out bias or its impact in assessments.

When there are consistently racial patterns in the results, bias is present somewhere in the test, whether in the construct, method, or item, or some combination of these.

Bias in state standardized tests for school accountability

Regarding state standardized tests used for federal accountability, states undergo rigorous analysis to detect and remove all types of bias and must submit this evidence to the U.S. Department of Education for their assessment systems to be approved.

The department runs a peer review process of each state's assessment system, with experts in test development and curriculum as well as teachers and local assessment administrators. The data are in the form of analysis of test-taker results; it is not possible to analyze a test before it is given to test-takers because experts must see evidence of how the students interacted with the test.

There is no question that bias exists in standardized testing, and there is no question that standardized testing is one tool to understand how students are doing against common, challenging standards of learning. Therefore, future versions of tests should pilot new test items on a broader range of students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds to minimize-or better yet eliminate-bias. And where bias occurs in test construct, how the skills and knowledge are being assessed must be better understood and addressed.

However, while eliminating bias is a necessary step, it is not sufficient on its own if educators are to take an anti-racist approach to teaching and learning.

Assessments and cultural competence

Solely addressing bias in assessments is an incomplete response; assessments are one part of a larger system of teaching and learning, which also includes standards, instructional materials, and instructional practice. These elements must be evaluated for bias and addressed as an entire system.

The question of synchronizing these parts of the teaching and learning experience extends beyond the academic content, to the interactions between teachers and students, the climate of the school, and the larger sociocultural context. This entire process is known as cultural synchronization, and the practice of applying it to teaching is called culturally responsive pedagogy.

Culturally responsive pedagogy is an attempt to create continuity between what students experience at home and what they experience at schools. Students see people who share their race and ethnicity included in the topics they study, for example. When students have access to culturally responsive pedagogy, they experience academic success and develop cultural competence and the ability to question the current social order, thereby allowing students to gain a sense of empowerment from their history and culture.

Common criticism: It is hard for teachers to prepare students without knowing the test material

Is this claim true or false? It is neither.

Federal law places a premium on test security. Test results are used to evaluate school performance and must be a fair and accurate representation of student participation in the test. Therefore, only test developers know the exact test items.

This does not mean that teachers do not know what kinds of test items will be included, however. Two groups-the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)-developed an annual statewide assessment that more than 40 states first used in 2014. Each group releases test items used on previous tests, which reflect the kinds of items included in future tests. Additionally, both consortia analyze student responses as a resource for teachers.

Common criticism: The tests take too long, lessening time for instruction

Is this claim true or false? It is neither, because the answer depends on what consumers of the test results value knowing about student performance.

The SBAC and PARCC assessments take about eight to nine hours total to complete for reading and math. This lengthy assessment is due to the law requiring that the test measures the full range and depth of the state's grade-level standards through formats that are not just multiple choice but also constructed response, or written answers. These types of test questions take more time to complete than filling in an answer bubble.

If policymakers, educators, and parents value knowing how well students have learned the full set of standards for their grade level-and not just responses to "yes" or "no" multiple-choice answers-then an eight- or nine-hour test will provide that information.

However, if policymakers, educators, and parents prefer having a high-level overview of whether students have learned at grade level, then a shorter exam will suffice.

Common criticism: Students experience stereotype threat when taking the test

Is this claim true or false? It is to be determined.

Stereotype threat occurs when a member of a certain social group is at risk of experiencing an unconscious response to a negative stereotype about that person's own group.

More than 300 studies show the impacts of stereotype threat, which include limiting one's aspirations in a field of study or career. Most of the studies are on college students and other adults, and none are specific to the state test. The studies include how participants performed on tasks as well as on tests.

Like bias, this is a phenomenon that probably exists among public school students and is an area that needs to be studied further to know how it might be affecting student performance and how it can be mitigated.

Common criticism: Results are not useful for teachers to employ in their practice

Is this claim true or false? It is false.

Annual state assessments results are used to evaluate, at year's end, whether students met the state's academic standards for their grade. As a result, they are not designed for teachers to use in their daily practice to customize instruction for students.

However, annual state assessments will show patterns for entire classrooms of students, and teachers can use this information to know generally what students did and did not learn and adjust their approach accordingly for the next school year's students.

Common criticism: State standardized tests narrowed the curriculum

Is this claim true or false? It is true, and it happened because of how the tests were used to evaluate schools.

In the period from 1987 to 2003, the amount of time devoted to different subjects held steady in public elementary schools: two hours to English, one hour to math, and a half-hour each to social studies and science.

However, since the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001 and required reading and math tests to be included in school accountability results, 62 percent of a nationally representative sample of schools and 75 percent of schools identified as in need of improvement increased their time given to math and English by about half and decreased the time given to other subjects.

Common criticism: The tests result in teaching to the test

Is this claim true or false? It is true.

A 2007 review of 49 studies found that 80 percent of the studies saw a change in curriculum and increased focus on teacher-led instruction.

Generally, "teaching to the test" means "teaching in a manner that is not considered optimal for learning standard content or skills, but is believed to improve test performance."

Is teaching to the test always bad? Not necessarily. An assessment only covers a subset of the range of standards. If a teacher solely focuses on that subset, then students are missing out on other important content and skill development. But if tests are aligned with the depth and breadth of the standards, then teaching to the test some of the time can be advantageous.

Common criticism: Test results are used to take money from low-income schools

Is this claim true or false? It is false, although there are nuances to understand.

The No Child Left Behind Act measured school performance through a construct called adequate yearly progress (AYP). AYP referred to the total number of students who achieved a score of proficient or above on the state test. Students' scores of proficient or above were supposed to signify that they had achieved or exceeded the grade-level standards. For comparison, a grade of a C usually means proficient on an A-F grading scale.

When schools missed AYP targets, districts set aside 20 percent of their Title I funding-which provides additional education programs in schools in low-income communities-to pay for supplemental education services. These services include tutoring as well as transportation for students to attend higher-performing schools that also received Title I money.

As a result, districts did not exactly lose Title I money; however, they had to use it for a specific purpose when they did not meet AYP targets. Because there was less money to spend on services and resources for individual schools, the claim that test results lead to less money for schools does have some merit, but it is not the entire picture.

The current version of the law, ESSA, takes a different approach to deploying resources to schools that need them. It eliminates AYP and instead requires states to provide additional money to some schools that are classified as low-performing, many of which have been poorly funded for decades, to help them improve.

Common criticism: Test results are used to close schools serving Black and Latinx students

Is this claim true or false? It is true, but only for a subset of schools that were closed.

Between 2003 and 2013, approximately 2 percent of all U.S. public schools closed. Many of these were due to declining populations. Some of them, however, were due to poor student outcomes, as indicated in part by state assessment results.

A 2017 study of closures found that 1,522 schools closed between 2006-07 and 2012-13 because their state assessment scores were in the bottom 20 percent of the 26 states included in the study. In the study, schools with higher rates of Black and Hispanic students were more likely to close than similarly performing schools with smaller shares of students who are racial and ethnic minorities.

Recommendations: The role that assessments should play in education

Assessments should drive excellent teaching and ensure that all students learn at high levels. To do so, education policy and practice must encompass a broader range of assessments so that schools have complete and effective assessment systems. This system would include predictive, informative, and evaluative assessments based on the state's standards and curriculum. Such a system would be based on three principles:

1. Assessments should be used only for their three intended purposes: 1) to predict student performance, 2) to inform instruction, or 3) to evaluate learning. A complete system would include assessments that serve one of these purposes, and there should not be too many assessments that serve the same purpose.

2. All assessments should align with the state's academic standards and with high-quality instructional materials. This alignment allows for a tighter integration between what students learn in class and the items that will be included on the assessment. Additionally, assessment results will send consistent signals about how well students are learning the standards and what they must continue to learn to master the full range by year's end.

3. Effective assessment systems use the data appropriately and for the right audiences. For example, teachers should use predictive assessment results to inform what standards students must still learn to be able to grasp the content of the first lesson in a unit of instruction. Predictive assessments can also shed light on whether students are on track to meet benchmarks on end-of-year or other evaluative assessments. On the other hand, district administrators and policymakers can use evaluative assessment results to inform what types of additional supports students may need to achieve the standards. Because of the different tools policymakers, administrators, and educators must deploy in the education system, all of these stakeholders must be informed on how to appropriately interpret assessment results.

Assessment audits can be an effective tool to guide states' and districts' understanding of what assessments they currently use and what purpose they serve, ensuring that students are not overassessed for evaluation purposes but also to give information that predicts their learning and informs instruction. Conducting such an audit can be a useful first step in building an effective and balanced assessment system.

A case study for local assessments: Finland

For years, Finland enjoyed top rankings on the Program for International Student Assessment, an international test of 15-year-olds in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries. Though Finland consistently outranks most other countries, its scores have declined-a puzzling development for researchers.

Despite the decline, Finland credits its educational success to its heavy investment in teacher training as well as its model for using independent and group projects as ways to engage students in their learning.

Notably, Finland takes a very different approach to assessments than the United States. The country eliminated its national evaluative assessment and instead allows teachers to design their own assessments that are based on the national curriculum. The same training equips teachers to design school-based projects for students. The country only uses predictive standardized assessments for students to take at the end of their education. Those results are used for consideration for college admissions, not for evaluating education programs, students, or teachers.

As a comparison in the United States, the quality of teacher development and training varies widely and does not uniformly reflect the quality of the opportunities available in Finland or other high-achieving countries.

While Finland's example showcases the power of assessments to inform instruction, that is only one aspect of a complete and effective assessment system.

How federal policies can support the effective use of assessment in teaching and learning

Effective and complete assessment systems contribute to student learning. Currently, however, states are not required to have such systems in place-only an annual evaluative assessment, which is a practice that began with the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. As a result, the focus on one test and its use to evaluate schools created bad incentives, as discussed earlier in this report. However, that does not mean that evaluative tests should not play a role in education; to the contrary, high-quality assessments aligned to a state's standards are a critical tool in the teaching and learning process. Federal policy should thus push states and districts to establish and maintain effective and balanced assessment systems.

Accordingly, any future updates to ESSA should ask states to design a vision for how assessments are part of the teaching and learning process and then describe which assessments predict student performance, inform teaching and learning, and evaluate student learning.

At same time, more large-scale research and development is needed in the practice and use of assessments. This is a great role for the federal government to play. The federal government should:

Fund the assessment pilot in ESSA and loosen some of its restrictions to support states in trying more innovative designs, even if those designs do not pan out. The assessment pilot gives states five years to try new assessment designs to replace the state's annual evaluative assessment.

Fund the development of new ways to assess students across a broad range of skills and not just through tests, but through other demonstrations of student learning as well. This can be done outside of the assessment pilot through the Competitive Grants for State Assessments program.

Fund the development of predictive, informative, and evaluative assessments.

Fund the creation of new and better ways to report assessment results, not just to parents, but to teachers and policymakers as well.

Study bias in testing, including in testing construct, methods, and items.

Reshape the teacher-focused Title II of ESSA and the Higher Education Act of 1965 so that they promote the development of better teacher training and support when it comes to assessment use.

Partner with institutes of higher education to identify ways that the training of future psychometricians-scientists who develop assessments-should change to ensure that tomorrow's tests do not replicate the bias and other drawbacks seen in current versions.

Encourage states to create science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) pathways that expose students to future careers as psychometric measurement experts to create a more diverse pool of psychometricians.

Conclusion

Today's conversation around assessments is dysfunctional and a zero-sum game. Assessments are neither useless nor are they the silver bullet to improving education. Instead, they are a vital tool to drive excellent teaching and learning. For equitable and effective testing to be fully realized, policymakers must invest in understanding the limits of today's assessments and build on those lessons. Innovation and research should support the development of assessment systems that drive teaching and learning forward as well as evaluate student learning.

The society and workforce of tomorrow will require students not only to master academic skills but also possess a broad range of crosscutting knowledge and abilities. America's current assessment system does a poor job of measuring how well students are prepared for that future and of guiding educators and parents to support students in their development. That is what policymakers and educators must address as they consider the future of assessments.

To that end, future research by the Center for American Progress will highlight ways in which technology advances may support the measurement of a broader range of student knowledge and skills.

About the authors

Laura Jimenez is the director of standards and accountability on the K-12 Education team at the Center for American Progress.

Jamil Modaffari is a research assistant for K-12 Education at the Center.

Acknowledgments

Alina von Davier, Duolingo

Ashley Eden, New Meridian

Bethany Little, EducationCounsel

Krasimir Staykov, Student Voice

Kristopher John, New Meridian

Mark Jutabha, WestEd

Michael Watson, New Classrooms

Mohan Sivaloganathan, Our Turn

Osonde Osoba, RAND Corp.

Roxanne Garcia, UnidosUS

Sandi Jacobs, EducationCounsel

Sean Worley, EducationCounsel

Scott Palmer, EducationCounsel

Terra Wallin, The Education Trust

Tim Langan, National Parents Union

The authors would like to thank the following people for their advice in writing this report:

Abby Javurek, Northwest Evaluation Association

Alina von Davier, Duolingo

Ashley Eden, New Meridian

Bethany Little, EducationCounsel

Edward Metz, Institute of Education Sciences

Elda Garcia, National Association of Testing Professionals

Jack Buckley, Robox; American Institutes for Research

James Pellegrino, University of Illinois at Chicago

John Whitmer, Institute of Education Sciences

Krasimir Staykov, Student Voice

Kristopher John, New Meridian

Laura Slover, CenterPoint Education Solutions

Margaret Hor, CenterPoint Education Solutions

Mark DeLoura, Games and Learning Inc.

Mark Jutabha, WestEd

Michael Rothman, independent consultant; formerly of Eskolta School Research and Design

Michael Watson, New Classrooms

Mohan Sivaloganathan, Our Turn

Neil Heffernan, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Osonde Osoba, RAND Corp.

Roxanne Garcia, UnidosUS

Sandi Jacobs, EducationCounsel

Sean Worley, EducationCounsel

Scott Palmer, EducationCounsel

Terra Wallin, The Education Trust

Tim Langan, National Parents Union

Vivett Dukes, National Parents Union

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Future of Testing in Education: Effective and Equitable Assessment Systems

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This analysis of testing in schools shows what the current debate gets wrong, and how educators and policymakers can create a future where assessments are a more effective part of the teaching and learning system.

# data[].attributes.body
This article focuses mainly on the negative outcomes of the current state of standardized testing and proposes alternative options. Alternative suggestions include portfolio-based assessments, performing exams, proficiency exit standards, exhibitions, etc. Some of these alternatives are already being used in the US and other countries.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There's only one thing worse than requiring students to reduce all learning to a single "correct" answer, and that is reducing assessment and accountability to a single standardized test.

By Bob Peterson and Monty Neill

Illustrator: Kathy Sloane

Assessment must evaluate how well children work and learn, not just how well they memorize. Photo by Kathy Sloane

Critics of standardized tests are often asked, "What's your alternative?" It's a legitimate - and important - question. Parents and community members have the right to know how well their children are learning.

Unfortunately, in part due to rhetoric that equates high standards with standardized tests, many parents believe that standardized tests will give them the answer. At the same time, parents are often the first to understand that the complexity of their child cannot be captured by a test score.

At issue is how to create alternatives to standardized tests that will inform parents and community members about how well the schools are doing and whether their children are learning what they need to know - that is, how to create an alternative approach to accountability. Teachers and parents also need to learn about and promote alternatives to "high-stakes" tests, the name given when a single exam determines if a child is promoted, or graduates from high school, or gets into college.

Standardized tests are just one type of assessment, although they often get the most publicity. It's also important to recognize that teachers assess students regularly as part of their on-going teaching. The challenge is to match assessment that is integrated into classroom instruction, and is focused primarily on helping individual children, with assessment that provides school- and district-wide information being demanded by local and state officials or various community forces.

One of the first steps toward rethinking assessments is to ask, "What is the purpose of the assessment?" and, "Is this purpose worthy or meaningful?" Answering these questions means addressing what is important for students to learn, how we help them learn, and how we know what they have learned.

Too often, the rationale for standardized testing appears overly punitive: "We're going to get these kids and schools to perform better - or else." Such an approach forgets that assessment should serve one primary purpose: to improve student learning. The goal is not to flunk kids, not to wave fingers at lousy teachers, not to make bold pronouncements that will be remembered at election time, not to give kids more of the same even though it didn't work the first time - but to provide information to help the student learn better.

Assessment serves other purposes as well. Community members may want data to see if schools are providing equal opportunity to all students. Policy-makers might want to know the effectiveness of various programs. Districts and state legislatures often use tests to hold schools accountable for how well they are spending taxpayers' money. Schools might also use assessment as a way to report to parents, or summarize and certify a student's achievement. Finally, districts might use changes in assessment policy to help transform the curriculum.

Depending on the purpose, different forms of assessment might be used. For example, an assessment designed to evaluate how well a school, overall, is teaching its students to read should not be used to decide whether a particular student should or should not be promoted to fourth grade. Furthermore, any assessment should ultimately serve, and not undercut, the primary goal of helping the student.

Alternatives to standardized testing are in use in both the United States and other industrialized countries - alternatives that range from student portfolios, to district-wide "proficiencies," to outside review teams that evaluate a school. There is growing evidence that these measures do a better job of showing how well students and schools are performing.

The biggest drawback to most of these alternatives is that they challenge this country's predominant approach to thinking and learning - that is, that we can only truly know something if it can be statistically and "objectively" determined and analyzed. History has unfortunately shown that such an approach has been used not just to predict, but to control the world and those who live in it. For many, the consequences are harmful, not beneficial.

Alternative assessments, on the other hand, require diversity in thinking about what is the purpose of knowledge and, indeed, even what constitutes knowledge. To challenge statistical ways of knowing is to challenge the status quo and its tendency to marginalize and describe as abnormal those who do not neatly fit into a statistical box. Alternative assessments mean alternative voices, perspectives, and actions. This is a vitally important reason why they should be embraced as an important part of accountability.

Other obstacles exist. Alternative assessments are new and, like any innovation, challenge those who prefer to do things the way they've always done them. It takes not only time but energy to re-educate teachers, parents, and students in new forms of assessments. Moreover, such assessments cost more because they require more sophisticated teaching, staff development, and scoring. Decent assessment can't be done cheaply, any more than can decent education.

Nor are alternative assessments a magic bullet. Teachers and parents need to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of any approach, and how to use it appropriately.

Following is a description of some of the most common forms of alternative assessments.

Portfolio-Based Assessment

One of the more promising forms of assessment is what is known as "portfolio-based assessment." The approaches to portfolios vary considerably, but they all rest on records kept by the teacher and on collections of the student's work, called the "student portfolio." During the school year, teachers and students gather work which shows student progress and achievement in various subjects such as English or science. Students are usually encouraged to reflect on the work that has been selected. Such reflection helps students think not only about what they have learned, but about their own learning processes, all of which contributes to the overall goal of improving student learning.

In some approaches, at the end of a marking period the teacher examines the portfolio and evaluates the work based on a scoring guide. Sometimes students or their peers also score their work. The teacher ultimately records a score on what is sometimes called a "learning record," attaching evidence such as a writing sample or write-up of a science experiment. This approach is useful for the teacher and parent in determining how well a student is progressing. But, through what is known as "random sampling," it also can be the basis for improved professional development and for school- and district-wide accountability.

Under "random sampling," a number of the learning records and student portfolios are selected randomly from each classroom. An independent group - of teachers from other schools, members of the community, or a combination of both - reviews the records and portfolios. If there is a big difference between the conclusions of the independent readers and the classroom teacher, a third group might be called in or a larger sample might be taken from the classroom, in order to determine how well a particular teacher consistently applies the agreed upon assessment guidelines.

Approaches of this sort have been developed in Britain, Australia, and the United States, particularly in Vermont, which has instituted statewide assessment programs in math and writing based on student portfolios. Projects such as the Learning Record, based in California, and the Work Sampling System, based in Ann Arbor, are other examples.

This classroom-based approach has several advantages. For example, the evaluation is based on a wide range of student work done over a long period of time, rather than on a single, paper-and-pencil test taken over a few hours. Further, the approach encourages schools and districts to invest in the professional development of the teachers and outside evaluators, and it pushes teachers to reflect more consistently on the quality of student work in their classroom.

One of the criticisms of this approach is that it works best when there are quality teachers. But such criticism needs to take into account that this classroom approach, over time, can encourage collaboration between teachers and improve their work. If done properly, this approach has teachers regularly talking about students' work and allows more-skilled teachers to help less-experienced teachers. Such portfolio discussions will inevitably include not only how to evaluate student work, but the nature of the work that is going on in particular classrooms, and strategies to get students to do better work. This approach can benefit a weak teacher, certainly more than standardized tests do.

Another criticism, especially when teachers have little control over what types of materials are to be included in the portfolio, is that the portfolio requirements can "hijack" the curriculum and overly dominate what is taught. For instance, if a district decides that the English portfolio for eighth graders needs to have an example of a business letter and a five-paragraph essay, the teacher may focus so much on those requirements that there is little time for other important topics such as poetry, creative writing, or literary analysis. One solution is to require a wide range of types of writing in a writing portfolio, as Vermont does. Many educators also note that it is better to have a "portfolio-driven curriculum," which is based on real student work, than a curriculum shaped by standardized tests and their reliance on random bits of memorized data and procedures.

Another problem with portfolios is logistics. Where does a high school English teacher store over 100 portfolios? How does an elementary school maintain portfolios as students move up in grades? How does the issue of student mobility influence this kind of record keeping? One creative solution is to video-tape portfolios, another is to save the information digitally in a computer. Though methods vary, teachers and schools are overcoming these problems.

A fourth criticism of the portfolio approach is that it relies too much on the individual judgment of teachers and opens the door to overly subjective evaluation. This concern has been raised most directly where teachers may not be sensitive to the needs and skills of students of color, or non-English speakers, or immigrants. Clearly, this is a serious issue. At the same time, it is a problem that pervades all forms of assessment. Who, for example, chooses the questions on standardized tests? Rarely is it immigrants, or non-English speakers, or educators of color.

If the outside evaluators are sensitive to this potential problem, portfolio-based assessment can be used to identify teachers who are subjectively giving lower evaluations to particular groups of students or teachers whose pedagogical weaknesses lead them to have students focus on mindless worksheets rather than engaging projects.

Overall, we have found that portfolios are central to high-quality schooling. They can foster collaboration among teachers, focus attention on getting students to do quality work, and provide data to the community on how well a school is performing.

Performance Exams

Some states and districts have adopted what are called performance examinations. These are tests given to all students, based on students "performing" a certain task, such as writing an essay, conducting a science experiment, or doing an oral presentation which is videotaped.

The Milwaukee Public Schools have done extensive work on developing such performance exams in the areas of writing, science, math, visual arts, and oral communications. For example, fourth or fifth graders must perform a 3-5 minute oral presentation. In writing, fourth, fifth, eighth, 11th, and 12th graders all have to write and revise an essay over a period of two days, based on a district-wide prompt that changes from year to year and covers different genres, from imaginary writing, to narrative essays, to expository essays. These essays are then judged independently and anonymously by teachers from the district, using a scale of one to four. Two teachers read each essay, and the final score is based on the sum of the two readers. To reduce subjectivity, if there is a difference of more than one point in the two readers' evaluation, a third reader scores the paper.

Some districts also use these performance exams as a way to check how well classroom teachers are scoring their student portfolios. If large numbers of students are doing well on the performance exams yet score poorly on the student portfolios, or vice versa, it sends a signal that follow-up needs to occur.

These performance exams have the advantage over standardized tests in that they "drive the curriculum" in a relatively progressive way. In Milwaukee, the assessments have encouraged teachers to focus on actual student writing rather than fill-in-the-blank work sheets. They have led to more hands-on science experiments where students actually learn the scientific process and how to reflect on and analyze data, rather than merely answer questions at the end of a textbook chapter. The oral presentations have been a useful way to get students actively involved, rather than merely listening to lectures by the teacher; they also force teachers to pay attention to oral communication skills, which cannot be tested with a paper-and-pencil exam. The actual performance assessments, once they are scored, can become part of student portfolios.

Teachers who help write the performance assessment tasks (or prompts) learn a lot about how to develop more interesting and academically valuable projects for their students.

Performance exams are one form of "performance assessments" which most often take the form of projects, from laboratory experiments to group activities to exhibitions (described below) which are done as part of classroom work. (Sometimes the term includes portfolios as well.) Using performance exams can encourage teachers to use a wider range of activities in the classroom, which can enrich instruction, deepen learning, and provide detailed assessment information.

Performance exams have not been used more widely in part because they take considerable time, both for the classroom teacher and the district. It takes time, expertise, and ultimately money to develop the prompts and score the assessments, to say nothing of training teachers in activity-based teaching methods necessary for such performance assessments.

Some very good teachers, particularly those who have spent years developing a cohesive curriculum for their classroom, may find that the exams disrupt the flow of classroom work, although this shouldn't be as much the case if the assessments are carefully aligned with good instructional practices.

Finally, another problem is that performance exams, as with any kind of assessment, can tempt teachers to "teach to the test." Even in performance assessment, the emphasis must remain on higher-level thinking skills instead of on recall and memorization.

Writing in an opinion piece this December in The New York Times, Harvard professor Howard Gardner cautioned, "It might now seem far better to teach students how to write a personal essay than to simply ask them multiple-choice questions about a passage. Yet it is possible even with essay tests to teach students to do well through mimicry rather than through general writing skills. ... Educators and parents should value the development of knowledge and skills that go beyond a single test. That is, high performance should be an incidental result of strong general preparation."

As with using random sampling of student portfolios, sampling can also be used with performance exams. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a federal agency that monitors student achievement, uses such a technique. When the NAEP reports, for example, on the progress of U.S. fourth graders the data is based on a sample of students. Some states, such as Maryland, are also adopting this approach. The Maryland State Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) covers writing, reading, math, science, and social studies; it also includes interdisciplinary exams. Each student is given an exam in only one subject area. This does not give an overall assessment of each student, but for the school it gives a score that covers all subject areas and provides comprehensive data.

We believe that performance assessments - including performance exams - can be useful, especially when they are integrated into the ongoing curriculum. They can suffer, however, when they are isolated from daily classroom life and imposed from above.

Proficiency Exit Standards

The assessment known as "proficiency exit standards" combines the approaches of portfolio-based assessment and performance exams; it also sometimes includes standardized tests.

Under this approach, students have to meet certain standards in order to be promoted to the next grade or to graduate from high school. In Milwaukee, for example, the district has developed proficiencies that students need to meet in order to complete eighth grade and graduate from high school. The proficiency standards focus on four broad areas - math, science, communication, and a research projectÑ and are generally considered more rigorous than most standardized exams.

Students are given several ways to show "proficiency" in each of these areas - through portfolios, classroom projects such as science projects, performance exams, standardized test scores, and research papers. The district took this approach because it did not want to rely on any single assessment to determine whether a student could be promoted or graduate.

In one example of how reliance on standardized tests is undercutting alternative assessment, MPS recently moved to give increased weight to standardized test scores, allowing high school students to meet certain proficiencies by merely passing the standardized Wisconsin Student Assessment System tests.

Exhibitions

Exhibitions of student work are another useful assessment. Perhaps the most common exhibition is also one of the oldest - the science fair. As with any student work, the strength of the approach rests on providing ways for all students to succeed. Everyone knows stories of parents who do the science fair project for their kid, building elaborate electrical engines or wondrous weather kits. Some schools try to get around this problem by having students work on the projects at school.

At Central Park East in New York City, exhibitions are used along with portfolios. In order to graduate, students have to demonstrate competencies in 12 areas of learning and present their portfolio work to a committee of adults - somewhat similar to the oral exams common for postgraduate degrees.

At La Escuela Fratney in Milwaukee, at the end of fifth grade (before they leave for middle school), students select some of their work from throughout the year and invite family and community members to an open exhibition. One project that figures prominently is the student-made book, in which students reflect on what they've learned throughout elementary school. The book also includes examples of work from their entire time at Fratney, which have been collected as part of their portfolios.

Parent Conferences and Input

One important reason for assessment is to let parents know how well their child is progressing. This purpose cannot be separated from the larger issue of communication between school and home. A number of schools are experimenting with assessment programs that are based on a process of two-way communication.

Some schools, for instance, have lengthy conferences with parents before their child even enters kindergarten, both explaining the schools' programs and getting input from the family on the child's strengths and weaknesses. Other schools have adapted their parent-teacher conferences so that they do a better job of letting parents and teachers talk together about the child's progress. In order for such an approach to work, parent-teacher conferences need to go beyond the "five minutes per teacher" syndrome that is particularly common in middle and high schools - where teachers haul out the grade book and talk, and parents listen.

In this approach, schools need to ensure that they give parents a clear idea of the school's curriculum and a general view of child development. This is particularly important in early elementary grades, where children develop at different rates and ages and children cannot be pigeon-holed into a single set of expectations. Likewise, in adolescence, teachers and parents need to communicate about developmental issues and how they may be affecting student performance.

Some schools involve students in the conferences. Students are asked to present work from their portfolios, reflect on what they have learned, and help figure out where they have made good progress and where they still need work.

To work best, such an approach needs to be part of a comprehensive effort to ensure that parents know they can raise concerns at any point during the school year, not just at conference time. Soliciting and encouraging such parental input is not easy but is essential if there is to be a true collaboration between home and school.

This issue is, in the final analysis, grounded in difficult questions of the power imbalances in most schools, particularly along lines of race and class. Some schools have taken preliminary steps in trying to address this problem by hiring a parent organizer/liaison, or having a parent center, or forming a parent/teacher curriculum committee, or ensuring that principals welcome parental input rather than view it as yet another chore. In some districts, such as Rochester, NY, parents are involved in teacher evaluation; how well a teacher communicates with parents is specified as a part of the evaluation.

School Report Cards

Just as parents need to know how well their child is doing, communities have the right to know how well entire schools are performing. Sometimes, this happens in a rather distorted way: the local newspaper ranks schools based on a single standardized test or battery of tests. Beyond the cold hard number, there is little analysis of how or why some schools are performing differently - or even if the test is a valid measure of student achievement. Equally troubling, a school's performance often tells more about the income level of the students' families than the quality of teaching and learning at the school.

In the last few years, a growing number of schools have issued "school report cards" - in fact, over two-third of states now require such report cards, and many are posted on web sites.

School report cards generally go beyond a listing of test scores, although that data is included. Other information in the report, depending on the state or district, can include attendance, average grade point, the number of Advanced Placement courses, discipline issues such as suspension rates, parental involvement, types of assessment (such as whether performance exams are required in certain subjects) and their results, school mission and governance structure, and so forth. The information is sometimes broken down by race, gender, socio-economic status, first language, and other important categories, in order to show how well schools are serving students from diverse backgrounds.

While such report cards are superior to a simple listing of test scores, there are important cautions: in particular, data can be omitted or manipulated. Some high schools, for example, have a policy of dropping students from a class if they have more than three unexcused absences. As a result, the grade point average in that class can be artificially high because only a select group of students is included. Also, if the primary data on student learning is from standardized test scores, as is often the case, then parents will have too little information.

Overall, school report cards need to reflect a much richer view of student learning, such as can be found in portfolios and exhibitions. In fact, rather than just a "report card," some schools have begun to develop school-level portfolios. Other schools and outside people can evaluate the school by looking at portfolios and by visiting the school.

School Quality Review Teams

Because student success is intimately related to the culture of learning in an entire school, one valuable assessment, known as the "School Quality Review Team," focuses on school-wide issues.

Teams of trained educators and community members visit schools, usually for up to a week. The teams observe classrooms, follow students, examine the curriculum, and interview parents and teachers. Based on their observations, they write up a formal report, with specific recommendations for improvement.

This approach, modeled on a century-old system in England, has been adopted in a few states, including New York and Rhode Island. A growing number of schools in Boston use review teams.

To be most effective, the team's recommendations need to be distributed to and acted upon by both teachers and parents - which often requires additional time and resources. Another shortcoming in this approach is that the team often reviews a school based on its self-described mission; if the mission is weak or inadequate, this might not be noted in the final report.

It Won't Be Easy

Adopting these alternatives isn't easy - old ways of doing things are always more comfortable and familiar. Here are some of the most common pitfalls:

Assuming one can muster the political clout to change the growing emphasis on high stakes standardized tests, most alternatives take time to develop. Because most are implemented while existing standardized tests continue, teachers are being asked to do more and more assessing - but not given any more time to do so. One more task is added to an already filled day. Sometimes, that in and of itself causes teacher opposition.

If such assessments are to provide a true alternative, it's essential that a broad array of parents and staff be involved. Otherwise, both parents and teachers feel that, once again, someone else is telling them how to raise their child or how to teach.

Many of these alternative assessments are new to just about everyone involved: policy-makers, students, teachers and parents. There needs to be thorough discussions of the pros and cons of various assessments, and clear understanding of the purpose of any particular assessment. While conservatives often decry the "status quo" mentality of teachers and schools, on the testing issue it is the conservatives who are refusing to "think outside the box" and are relying on traditional, and flawed, methods of standardized testing.

Such assessments take more work, more time, and more resources.

Any assessment is prone to problems of inequity, inadequacy, and subjectivity. Recognizing, and counteracting, these problems is essential.

Finally, it cannot be stated too often: the primary purpose of assessment is to improve the quality of teaching and to help students learn better. If the focus is not on student learning, it's misplaced.

District and state officials have the right and responsibility to require schools to provide evidence that all students are learning, but such requirements must not be allowed to control all aspects of schooling. Students and teachers need time to explore their interests, to pursue matters in depth, to develop qualities of thinking and working. In fact, a really good accountability and assessment system will tell parents and the public that these, too, are part of education.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Why it's wrong to reduce assessment and accountability to a student's performance on a single test, and what schools can and should do instead.

# data[].attributes.body
This education blog also goes over the history of standardized testing as well as some pros and cons. It then lists and describes seven alternatives to standardized testing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the United States, it's very common for colleges and universities to require prospective students to submit standardized test scores as part of their application process. At the same time, primary and secondary schools conduct standardized tests annually to gauge how students are faring. For years, there has been fierce debate over whether or not these test scores should hold so much weight, or even any at all. Despite the exams having pros and cons, there are alternatives to standardized testing that can be implemented.

We will share 7 of the top alternatives to standardized tests.

What are Standardized Tests?

Standardized tests have been around in America since the mid-1800s. A test is considered to be standardized if all test-takers have the same questions (or questions from the same bank) and are scored consistently. The goal is to be able to objectively compare students, in theory.

Standardized tests may have multiple-choice, true/false, essay questions, short-answers or a mixture of all types. These days, many standardized tests are administered digitally on computers, but they can also be taken by hand.

Source: Unsplash

Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing

The controversy surrounding standardized testing is ongoing, perhaps because there are genuinely many pros and cons. So, depending on one's stance, it's very possible to argue for or against them.

Here's a look at some commonly cited upsides:

Provides a way to objectively measure performance and understand where improvement is needed

Offer metrics for teacher evaluations

Can gauge academic rigor

Supplies data for marginalized groups of students

On the other hand, some cons are:

Can be considered sexist, racist, and classist

They measure test-taking skills more than knowledge

Unfair to be used for teacher evaluations because they don't always test what is taught

Cannot be a predictor of future success

Alternatives to Standardized Testing

Some people believe that when you are designing education according to results on standardized tests, it's all about the average. If you approach education this way, you alienate students and are essentially catering education to no one at all.

Instead of using standardized tests, these alternative methods have evolved that can take their place:

1. Multiple measures

As the name describes, multiple measures is a way of using multiple forms of data to track, gauge, and better understand how a student is performing.

For example, on a broad scale for data, states could access information like graduation rates, demographic information, and assessments created by teachers themselves.

School districts can also collect emotional skills surveys and game-based assessments. These all allow a student to perform in a comfortable environment without feeling the pressure of the outcome.

2. Portfolios

Like in the job market, prospective candidates submit portfolios to showcase their work. This could be the case in education as well. Portfolios can be composed of both individual and group projects. Teachers can assign projects year-round and students can have the freedom to choose which projects they believe depicts their best work.

In this way, they can create their own portfolio and have agency over their own work. It also allows students to focus on what they are actually interested in. In the process of creating and sharing a portfolio, students also gain from sharpening their presentation and communication skills.

3. Sampling

In most cases when it comes to data collection, researchers will take a sample of an entire population to represent the greater sum. This is how sampling would work for standardized tests. Rather than every individual student having to sit for the test, schools and school districts could select a representative sample for the whole population of students to take the tests.

4. Game-based assessment

As a newer option of the lot, many companies and educational institutions have begun toying (no pun intended) with the idea of offering game-based assessments. This doesn't mean that students get to play any game they like. Instead, games are expertly designed to test higher-order thinking skills and problem-solving abilities. While traditional standardized exams fail to measure ability to take feedback or systems thinking, game-based assessments do so.

5. Social and emotional skills surveys

Researchers are continuing to find that nonacademic qualities play a huge role in determining one's success. Characteristics like grit and perseverance are highly important. So, educational institutions realize that emotion and social skills are also a priority when it comes to teaching and measurement. Surveys are a great tool to measure these abilities.

6. Inspections

With any of these approaches, inspections can be a part of the equation. In fact, in Scotland, inspections are commonplace. An inspection is when a representative on behalf of the government will come to sit in on lessons for observation. Inspectors may also review students' work and conduct interviews.

7. Low-stakes testing

Although standardized tests are commonplace, they don't happen very often. Instead, they may be administered at the beginning and end of a year or even just once a year. Proponents of alternatives also believe that more tests may be the answer.

However, when adding more tests into the mix, it will translate into reducing the stakes of each test. By doing so, students may be able to ease their stress levels because the outcome won't mean so much.

Additionally, with more frequent, low-stakes testing, students can be tested upon completion of a unit or topic so their memory will still be fresh.

Getting a Degree in Education

Do you think you have what it takes to implement better solutions than standardized testing? Do you want to change the way education works for the better?

You can be the difference that institutions need! By obtaining a degree in Education, you can work in administration, public policy, or on the ground directly with students. At University of the People (where prospective students don't need to submit their standardized test scores to attend), we offer a tuition-free Master of Education degree.

Source: Unsplash

To Test or Not to Test: That is the Question

In some instances, standardized testing is an adequate solution to fulfill the need of academic institutions, statewide governments, and educational boards. However, for many students, a standardized test doesn't provide an accurate reflection of their capabilities.

Education is a robust endeavour, which means assessments should be, too. This is why many schools and school districts believe in alternatives to standardized testing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Alternatives To Standardized Testing: Top 7 Choices - UoPeople

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Standardized testing doesn't have to be the only way to gauge students' abilities. Check out these alternatives to standardized testing that may work better.